


Nerd Table

by tasu7



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben Solo POV, Board Games, F/M, Fluff, Games, Geeks, High School Drama, Hockey, M/M, Prom, Rock Climbing, Romance, School, Videogames, cute high school romance, jiu jitsu, nerds, this is PG/PG13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-10-05 21:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17332682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tasu7/pseuds/tasu7
Summary: Ben, one of the nerdiest nerds at his high school, is completely smitten with the new girl, Rey. She plays board games, loves videogames, and is even better at robotics than him. And somehow they've become friends.The problem is she doesn't like him like that. And Ben can't just tell her how he feels.(Highschool Reylo story, all from Ben's POV).





	1. Settlers of Catan

“Alright bitches, give me all your sheep.”

The truth is that there wasn’t a nerdier table in the cafeteria than Ben’s table. And he was fine with that – it had always been that way. Since elementary school, he, Finn, Hux, and Mitaka had always sat together at lunch and played some sort of game while they ate. They liked to switch it up between card games like Magic: The Gathering, board games like Risk, and game linking their Game Boys for Pokémon Red. 

He was more than aware that as they got older, as social classes within their schools became more distinct, he and his friends fell to the bottom of the totem pole. ‘Nerds’, ‘geeks’, whatever you wanted to call them. Ben wasn’t ashamed. He’d rather hang out with his friends and play nerdy games than fake his way through juvenile, pretentious social intercourse just to be ‘cool’.

Now that they were juniors at their high school, it was well established that the small, round table near the windows of the cafeteria was theirs. It was the perfect table for the four of them to gather around and play games. Sometimes they had streaks- they’d play the same game for a whole week or two. Sometimes they’d switch daily. They had a rigorous system- whosoever ‘week’ it was got to submit a poll via text each morning with three games as options. The members had to vote by lunchtime, at which point the owner of the game would have to retrieve it from their locker and bring it to the cafeteria.

The first week back at school after winter break was Mitaka’s to govern. He always put his favorite, Settlers of Catan, on the list, and it won the poll for their first day back. Despite being sad that winter break was over and they could no longer hang out in Hux’s basement playing video games all day, they were all secretly glad to be back to their normal routine. Ben actually kind of liked school. He had some good teachers that actually knew a thing or two, and he had always enjoyed learning.

“It’s _wool_ you classless oaf,” Hux sneered.

“I can call it whatever I want since you have to hand it over,” Finn cheekily replied, laying down his Monopoly card to collect all of the wool resources from everyone’s hand. 

Hux huffed and surrendered three cards, Mitaka one, and Ben two.

“And with that, I’m trading in my two-for-one sheep for three ore and building a city.”

“Why didn’t you just collect ore with your Monopoly?” Mitaka asked.

“Because I’ve been watching which resources are out there and I know there’s like one ore max,” Finn said, rolling his eyes. “You really need to start counting cards, Mitty.”

Ben chuckled as Mitaka looked embarrassed. Despite Catan being his favorite game, he wasn’t very good at it. Then something over Mitaka’s shoulder caught his eye. A few tables over, there was a girl sitting alone, which was odd. Ben squinted to try to get a better look at her. She didn’t look familiar at all. Not that he was popular or anything, but he could at least recognize everyone in their grade. And it was weird to see someone sitting completely alone like that, even the nerds had friends. As he stared at her, her gaze wandered in his direction, and Ben quickly looked away.

They continued to play. Hux quickly built the largest army (as always), while Mitaka snagged as many ports as he could. Ben usually angled for longest road, but he didn’t have a clear shot, so he stuck with developing his settlements into cities. Occasionally, he peered over Mitty’s shoulder to catch another glimpse of the girl. She was kind of far away, but he could still tell that she was pretty. She had brown hair that was tied up into some sort of knots, and she had a beautiful, clear face. She continued to look around the cafeteria, and it looked like she was a little nervous. Could she be new? Maybe that’s why she was sitting alone…

“Solo!” Hux said loudly.

Ben whipped his head back toward the game, realizing his friends were all looking at him.

“What?”

“It’s your turn, dipshit.”

He picked up the dice and rolled a seven. Mitaka groaned, slowly picking cards out of his hand to discard. Ben moved the robber to the lumber surrounded by Finn and Hux, trying to give Mitaka a break. He grabbed a card from Hux’s hand and passed the dice to Finn. He immediately turned back to look at the girl. She was juggling an apple in her hands, in a fidgety sort of way. All of a sudden, she looked back in his direction. Ben was too slow to look away, and she caught his eyes. He tried to make it seem like he was looking somewhere else in her general vicinity, but he internally winced at being caught staring.

Hux ended up winning, and the bell signaling the end of the lunch period rang soon after. As usual, the boys hadn’t eaten much of their lunches, so they all shoveled food into their mouths as they packed up the game and headed to their respective classes.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Welcome back from winter break, everyone,” Mr. Ackbar said to everyone. “I hope everyone was able to complete the packet I assigned over the holidays.”

From where he sat in the back row, Ben heard a couple of groans come from his classmates, probably indicating that they either hadn’t done it at all or hadn’t finished. He had completed his before Christmas Eve. But that was because he liked physics. He’d barely gotten his English reading done.

“We have a new student joining us this semester,” he continued. “Ms. Niima, why don’t you introduce yourself?”

Everyone looked at the girl in the second row to whom Mr. Ackbar guestured. Ben first saw a brown, bunned hairstyle from the back, and instantly recognized it as the one that belonged to the girl that was sitting alone at lunch. He saw her physically stiffen for a moment, but then slowly stand up.

“Uh, hi,” she began shyly. “I’m Rey. I just moved here.”

She had a sweet voice, Ben thought to himself. He had never really noticed someone’s voice before. 

“And do you like physics?” Mr. Ackbar asked cheerfully.

“Uh… yeah. I do,” she answered.

Ben was sure she would have answered affirmatively anyway to please Mr. Ackbar, but she sounded sincere. 

“Excellent,” Mr. Ackbar said, handing her a packet. “I’ll speak with you after class to get you caught up, but I’m sure your fellow students would also love to help you out and get you acquainted with the class.”

Ben watched her look around skeptically as she sat down. He could tell that she didn’t expect anyone to actually help her. He hoped she was wrong. There were quite a few decent people in this class. And if they didn’t help her, he would. She turned back toward the front of the classroom, tucking into her desk as if to make herself as small as possible.

The rest of the class was spent finishing the packet assigned over the break. Mr. Ackbar was cool like that. He wasn’t so strict with deadlines, he just wanted his students to genuinely understand and complete the course material. Ben was done with his, so he sat back and watched as others started working together to finish, with Mr. Ackbar wandering the room around to provide help.

He watched Rose, who was sitting next to Rey, share her textbook with her. Ben had known Rose since kindergarten, and had never seen her utter an unkind word to anyone. She was even nice to Ben and his friends, and never made fun of them for being nerds. He felt a sense of relief to see that someone was helping Rey, though he wasn’t sure why. He spent the rest of the period sneaking glances at her as he helped Snap and Kaydel on either side of him finish up the trickier problems.

Before he knew it, the bell rang. He watched Rey as she made her way up to Ackbar’s desk. She looked less nervous now. Ben hurried out before he was caught staring again.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Settlers of Catan won the daily poll for the next day, too. Ben, Hux, and Finn were already seated at their table when Mitaka came scurrying up with his arms loaded with his books, his lunch, and the game.

“I’m winning today, I can feel it,” Finn said confidently, grabbing the box from Mitaka to start setting it up.

“Is that so?” Ben asked, laughing. Finn was the most competitive of all of them. Particularly when they played Mario Kart. Hux’s mom had yelled down to the basement thousands of times to tell Finn to stop swearing so loudly.

“Excuse me…” a voice said.

The boys looked up to see Rey standing there. She was in a grey sweatshirt and jeans. She didn’t look like a lot of the other girls at their school, who seemed to all wear the same, lame, name-brand clothes and shoes. Finn’s hands froze in mid-air as he was placing tiles on the board. Ben saw Mitaka blink in confusion, he didn’t talk to girls much. Ben found that he couldn’t quite close his mouth. There was a solid five seconds of silence around the table.

_Holy shit. She’s talking to us. What do I do?_

“Yes?” Hux said, thankfully breaking the quiet.

“I was wondering… would you mind… would it be ok if I played with you?” she asked with a hopeful voice, giving a quick point toward the game board.

Another awkward silence.

_Quick Ben, say something to the pretty girl. Anything._

“You wanna play... Catan?” Finn asked, sounding confused.

“I… yeah…” she said, trailing off, sounding less confident.

Ben noticed that her eyes were hazel. They were… stunning.

“Uh…” Hux said, looking around at the boys, “we don’t have an expansion pack…”

Rey’s face immediately dropped from nervous to rejected, much to Ben’s dismay.

“It’s ok,” he finally managed to choke out in a too loud voice, standing up from his seat. “You can have my spot.”

Rey looked at Ben then. The guys looked at him as if he were crazy.

“Oh, no,” she said, waving her hand, looking apologetic. “I wouldn’t want to take your spot…”

“No, please,” he said, stepping to the side and pulling out the chair. “I’ll just pull up another chair and watch.”

“I couldn’t make you do that…” she insisted with a small smile.

Ben liked the way dimples appeared on her cheeks when she did that.

“No, really,” he argued. “I don’t want to play anyway.”

It was a total lie. The guys looked at him as if he had grown a second head. They’d never had anyone else at their lunch table before.

“Well… if you insist…” she said, making her way to his side of the table. “Thanks, I love Catan.”

Ben grabbed a chair from another table, and motioned at Finn to scoot over so that he could add it to theirs. Finn looked annoyed as he knocked shoulders with Hux when he moved over.

Ben and Rey both sat down, and there was another painful moment of silence around the table.

_Now what do I do?_

“I’m Hux, by the way,” Hux suddenly said, seeming to remember his manners. His mom had sent him to cotillion classes when they were younger, much to the other boys’ amusement. “I don’t think we’ve met before.”

He saw Rey look relieved when someone finally addressed her. 

“I’m Rey,” she answered with a small smile. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” Hux replied.

Finn and Mitaka were still looking at her as if she was an alien. Hux let out a sigh and continued.

“These two are Finn and Mitaka,” he said, pointing to his friends. “And that’s Ben.”

Rey looked at him then from her spot beside him, and Ben couldn’t help but notice that up close she had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose.

“Thanks for giving me your spot, Ben,” she said.

“No problem,” he mumbled almost unintelligibly. He found it hard to speak normally around her.

“I think you’re in my US History class,” Finn finally said, seeming to have recovered his wits. He continued setting up the board.

“Oh,” she said, looking a little embarrassed. “Sorry, it’s hard to keep track of everyone in my classes…”

“You’re new, right?” Ben asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“You’re in my physics class,” he supplied helpfully.

“Oh,” she said, sounding a bit happier. “I really like Mr. Ackbar so far, he seems cool.”

“He is,” Ben replied with a smile of his own. “Probably the coolest teacher at this school. Especially if you’re into physics.”

“Well… I am,” she said, tucking a piece of hair loose from her three buns behind her ear.

“Me too.”

Ben had to look away when their gaze lasted a second too long. He wasn’t used to this much social interaction with strangers, especially with a girl.

“Ok, Rey,” Finn said. “I hope you don’t mind being red, that’s Ben’s color.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” she said, reaching over to retrieve her pieces.

Ben began to dig into his lunch that he usually didn’t have time to eat. He decided that it might actually be kind of nice to sit back and watch for a change.

“Do you play friendly robber?” Rey asked as the rest organized their pieces.

Hux’s eyebrows raised. Ben was also impressed – Rey seemed to know what she was doing.

“No,” Hux answered, “but we play no robber the first three rounds. Just roll again if you get a 7.”

“Sounds good,” she replied. “To 10 points?”

“Yup, we’re just playing First Island. We go to 11 for Harbor Master.”

Rey nodded.

Ben had somewhat anticipated on helping her if she needed it, but he was starting to get the impression that she would be just fine.

“Alright,” Finn said, picking up the dice. “Let’s roll to decide order.”

Normally Finn wouldn’t need to say that. They had gamed together for so many years that they could play entire games nonverbally if they wanted. Ben was thankful that Finn seemed to be vocalizing things so as to be welcoming to Rey.

Mitaka ended up first in the order, and for some reason decided to build on a 3 Wool, 11 Ore, 10 Ore spot. Ben shook his head. Mitaka was a smart guy, but some games completely escaped him. Rey was next up, and she took a strategic spot. The initial building was done quickly, and they progressed into play.

Ben found himself watching Rey’s face react to certain moves and draws. He liked the way she winced when she got robbed, or smiled to herself when a roll gave her a lot of resources. The group somehow managed to keep up a friendly chat over the course of the game.

“So did you just move here?” Hux asked at one point.

“Yeah, from Jakku,” she said. “Kind of sucks having to switch schools in the middle of junior year.”

The boys nodded sympathetically – partly for having to live in Jakku and partly for switching schools. Even Mitaka gave a small “yeah”, the first word he’d spoken since Rey had sat down.

“Do you know anyone here?” Finn asked, rolling the dice.

“Nope,” she said. “So far everyone seems nice, though. I guess I know you guys now.”

Ben’s chest warmed a bit at that. Certainly they could be friends. He felt bad that she didn’t know anyone, most students here had been going to school together since kindergarten. It must be hard to try to break into.

“Well,” Ben said. “You’re welcome to sit with us at lunch.”

He had felt so bad for her yesterday when she sat alone. That was possibly the most embarrassing thing that could happen to you in high school. At least he had his other nerd friends.

“Really?” she asked, seemingly surprised, turning in her chair to face him.

Ben looked at the other guys. Mitaka looked scared shitless, but Hux and Finn just sort of shrugged and seemed to be fine with it.

“Well, yeah…” he said. “That is… if you don’t mind games.”

“Sweet… I noticed you guys playing Catan yesterday too… I was hoping you’d be cool with new players. This has to be the best table in the cafeteria.”

Finn snorted and choked on his mouthful of peanut butter sandwich at that. Hux smacked his back as he coughed and recovered. Even Mitaka seemed to be chuckling behind his hand.

“Oh yeah,” Finn said sarcastically when he finally swallowed. “We’re the coolest people here, as you can see.”

Rey looked confused, and looked over to Ben as if for clarification.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he said, “but if you’re looking to make cool friends or be popular, we are _by far_ your worst shot.”

Rey’s eyebrows furrowed, and she looked around the cafeteria for a moment.

“That can’t be true,” she said to them, “no one else here is even doing anything. They’re just sitting and eating. That seems boring.”

Hux and Mitaka’s mouths dropped a bit in disbelief. She was being serious.

“I’m glad you feel the same way as us,” Finn said, looking equally surprised. “But just know that we’ll understand if you eventually graduate on to a higher social class.” 

Rey still looked confused.

“We’re totally cool with you joining us and all, but we’re just warning you that you’re basically committing social suicide by sitting with us,” Hux said honestly. 

“Well… I don’t have any friends here anyway. And I like you guys. So I don’t care,” she said defiantly. Ben liked the way she tilted her head up slightly, indicating her confidence in her statement. “I’m not used to being popular anyway. I was spectacularly uncool at my old school.”

Ben was more surprised at that than anything. How could a pretty, nice girl like her not be popular? It went against everything he had come to learn about social hierarchy.

Hux and Finn just shrugged at each other before looking over at Ben, who also made a surrendering gesture.

“If you say so,” Hux said. “It would be nice to have someone new.”

“Yeah,” Finn agreed. “We’re all too familiar with each other’s playing styles and strategies. Sucks the fun out of a lot of games.”

“What else do you play?”

“At lunch?” Ben said, “Catan a lot, Magic, Risk, sometimes we play Pokémon Red.”

“Oooh, fun,” she said. “I have a Game Boy but it barely works. I got it used and I keep having to patch the circuit board.”

Rey was full of surprises.

“You know electronics?” Ben asked. He was a bit of an electronics nerd himself, though he doubt he could successfully work on something as small and as complex as a Game Boy motherboard.

“Yeah, I like to tinker with things,” she said, smiling over at him.

“Cool,” Mitaka said, seemingly finally to have worked up the courage to say something in front of her.

Ben watched Rey give him a small friendly smile for doing so. He wondered if she had experience with nerds as hardcore socially inept as him and his friends. Hux was probably the most adept in the group, having gone through all those cotillion classes. He could at least fake his way through a conversation with a stranger. Ben was probably next in line. Finn did ok, except in large groups where he completely shut down. Mitaka could barely talk to strangers, but he was a great guy once you got to know him.

“Ben likes to build computers and shit,” Finn said, turning in resources for a dev card.

“Oh!” Rey exclaimed excitedly, looking back at him. “That’s awesome.”

“It’s nothing,” he mumbled, feeling embarrassed. He rubbed the back of his head. “I’m not that good.”

“Don’t be so modest, Kylo,” Hux said.

“Kylo?” Rey asked, curiously.

“Sorry,” he said, “that’s my D&D character’s name. Kylo Ren.”

“You guys play D&D too?!?”

“Wait,” Finn said, looking up from his hand at her in surprise, “ _you_ play D&D?”

“Yeah!” Rey said happily. “Well,” she continued, her face dropping, “I guess I used too. Before I moved.”

“You can play with us when we start our next campaign,” Ben offered immediately. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so rash, but he didn’t like it when she looked sad. “We play 5th edition.”

Mitaka’s eyes widened in terror at Ben’s offer. Finn and Hux looked a bit confused.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Ben said. He felt uncomfortable speaking for the group, but something about Rey made him pull out all the stops. He tried to backpedal a bit upon seeing the looks on his friends’ faces. “I mean… you can come and see if you like our style of play then decide…”

Rey’s smile started to grow back again.

“Hux is usually DM,” he added.

“I can’t imagine you’d play that at lunch…” she said.

“No, we play D&D and video games in Hux’s basement,” Finn answered.

“A proper mancave then,” she joked, with a mischievous smile. “You’re sure I wouldn’t be intruding?”

Ben, Finn, and Hux looked at one another. He knew his best friends well enough to tell that they also thought Rey was cool. But he was worried about Mitaka. He didn’t want to make him uncomfortable to the point of anxiety. He tried to communicate this wordlessly to his friends by twitching his line of sight back and forth between them and Mitty.

“We’ll let you know when we know how long our current campaign is going to last,” Hux compromised, much to Ben’s relief. He was always good at navigating the awkward social situations they often got themselves into.

“Ok,” Rey said pleasantly. She didn’t push it.

“And that,” she said, laying down two grain and three ore, replacing one of her settlements with a city, “is game.”

All four of the boys’ eyes widened in surprise as Rey played her winning turn. They considered themselves masters after playing for so many years, and this new girl had just come in and demolished them.

“Well played,” Hux said with a laugh.

Finn looked grumpy, but gave her a smile anyway.

“I really thought I had it this time,” Mitaka said, collecting his pieces off of the board.

Ben was flabbergasted that Mitaka was able to form a complete sentence in front of Rey. He couldn’t even order from a female waitress at a restaurant. The guys had to do it for him.

Maybe this would be alright.


	2. Yu-Gi-Oh!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey becomes a part of the group and challenges them all to a game of Yugioh.

Having Rey at their lunch table quickly became the new normal. She actually knew most of the games they played, and just sat out from the ones she didn’t to watch and learn. Occasionally she’d pair up with Ben to be on a ‘team’. Ben loved when she would accidentally lean into him to whisper about their next play, or graze his fingers when pointing at cards in his hand. He had never thought that he was much for physical contact, but it felt so _nice_ when it was from her. 

_She’s leaning into you again. Be cool. Be cool. Don’t freak out._

She was right, her Game Boy was total crap. It died at completely unexpected times, at which point she would pull a tiny tool kit out of her bag, furrow her eyebrows, and dive deep into the heart of it before reassembling it and powering it back up. Ben wondered why she didn’t just buy a new one.

After only a week or two, it already felt like she was part of the group. Even Mitaka laughed out loud at her funny stories, and answered her questions about the weird cuisine his mom always packed him for lunch. Ben had never seen Mitaka warm up so quickly to anyone. In fact he had never seen him open up to a woman. He was proud of his friend for coming out of his shell, and was also amazed by Rey’s ability to form trusting relationships with people so easily. He wished he could do that. His circle of friends consisted only of the people at his lunch table. He found it hard to trust anyone else, or open up to someone new. Rey seemed to be doing it right, left, and center, as if she had always gone to school with the people here. Ben sometimes couldn’t wrap his head around why someone so cool was sitting with _them_.

Ben also noticed that she seemed to bond pretty quickly with Rose in physics class, and he often saw her walking with Phasma and Jess toward the cafeteria before waving goodbye to them and splitting ways to come to their table.

“So, Rey,” Hux said as she approached and sat down. “I’ve been meaning to ask you… I feel bad that you haven’t had any input on what games we should be playing...”

“Oh,” she said, “well… everything has been fun so far. Whatever you guys want to play is fine by me.”

“Actually,” Ben said, “we vote every morning via text what game we should play. We could add you to the group chat…”

“Yeah,” Finn agreed. “We all get an equal say that way.”

“Ok,” Rey agreed simply with a shrug. She pulled out her phone from her bag.

“Shit,” she muttered as her fingers danced across the screen, “I still don’t know how to work this thing. There’s too many useless features.”

“I thought you liked electronics?” Ben asked, confused.

“I do,” she explained, “it’s just that this is my first smartphone, just got it like a week ago. And there’s such a thing as _overdesigning_ something if you ask me.”

“What did you have before, a flip phone?” Mitaka asked.

“Yeah,” she said. Ben could see her ears redden a little bit at the tip. “It just had calling. Didn’t even have a camera. And somehow I still think I like it better than this.”

Ben didn’t even know they still _made_ flip phones. Things must have been pretty backward in Jakku. He wondered what other changes she was going through from moving here to Naboo. He got the feeling that there was more to it than she let on.

“Here,” he offered, extending his hand. “I’ll put my number in, and text myself. I’ll add you to the group chat.”

“Thanks,” she said, looking happy to drop her phone in his hand and let him deal with it.

He quickly added himself and texted his phone. He slid her phone back to her as he input her as a contact on his own phone and added her to their group chat. He felt a strange sort of satisfaction from having her phone number. It was sort of a big step in a friendship.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day, the boys sat at the lunch table, ready with the Risk board set up. After a few minutes, Rey still hadn’t arrived. Ben pulled out his phone to text her, hoping that it wouldn’t annoy her. She had voted in the morning poll, so at least he knew that she knew how to text with her phone.

Ben  
 **hey Rey. u coming to lunch?**

Rey  
 **Hi. Ms. Mothma asked me to meet with her over lunch  
to catch up on a few things you all learned last semester. sry!**

Ben  
 **no worries, good luck =p**

Mrs. Mothma was the notoriously strict calculus teacher. Even Ben was kind of afraid of her. But everyone seemed to like Rey, so he was sure she’d be fine.

“She’s not coming to lunch today,” he told the group, sticking his phone in his backpack. “Mothma’s got her catching up on some stuff.”

“Rough,” Finn said. “I’m so glad that I’m terrible at math and still in pre-calc. She’s terrifying.”

“Yeah, but you’ll have to have her next year,” Mitaka said, “and you’ll be stuck taking it with a bunch of juniors.”

Finn frowned at the thought. He had always been a year behind the rest of them in math. He was more of a languages guy. He somehow got the school to let him take two languages classes, so he was taking Spanish _and_ Mandarin. Hux was the hardcore history nerd of the group. His dad wanted him to go to a military college, even though Hux seemed much more the professor type rather than a general. Mitaka was particularly good at chemistry– Mr. Chewie had tried to get him to join the chemistry club the whole three years he’d been at the school, but Mitaka was petrified by the concept of having to interact with people that weren’t his friends outside of class. Ben liked physics the best, he was also in the robotics club. He’d probably end up studying computer science or physics at college. Maybe both.

“So,” Finn said as he placed an army in Australia. “Did you guys wanna invite Rey to play Super Smash Bros. with us tonight?”

Ben hadn’t even thought about doing so, and now felt kind of bad about unintentionally excluding her.

_Stupid. I should have thought to invite her._

The guys looked around at each other for a moment. This was kind of a big thing. It had always just been the four of them. They’d grown up together in Hux’s basement, it was _their_ space. It seemed kind of weird to have someone new. 

“I’m ok with it,” Hux said. “It would be nice to have someone with an actual chance at beating me.”

“Hey, I’m pretty sure I’ve won the most over the past two weeks,” Finn quickly argued.

“In your dreams,” Hux said, rolling his eyes. “Mitty? What about you? We all know Ben wants her there.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Ben asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Hux said. Ben saw him exchange a quick glance with Finn, who seemed to grin into his hand.

_What were they laughing about?_

“Mitty?” Hux asked again.

“She’s cool,” Mitaka said. “I don’t mind.”

They were all pleasantly shocked for a moment.

“Well alright then,” Finn said. “Ben, why don’t you text her?”

“Your phone is literally in your hand.”

“My battery’s about to die.”

Ben narrowed his eyes at him before retrieving his phone out of his bag to text her.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Having Rey over to play Super Smash Bros. with them ended up being a blast. It was a little awkward at first… the guys had unconsciously established an unofficial but permanent seating chart over the past 11 years – Hux and Mitaka on the couch, Finn and Ben in the armchairs. Ben immediately offered Rey his seat, though she seemed oblivious to the conundrum. Ben sat on the floor, trying but failing to fold his long legs into a comfortable position all night. It was also a four person game, so they had to alternate playing– the loser had to give up their controller at the end of each fight. That honor seemed to switch back and forth quite a bit between him and Mitaka. Ben found that his hands and fingers were too long and awkward for videogame controllers, he was much better at strategic card games and the like. Rey was pretty good. She usually got second or third, and even won a few rounds.

_She’s literally perfect._

More often than not, when he was the player left out, he just watched her. She was too focused on the screen to catch him staring. She was funny, funny in a way that none of them were. And it was obvious that she was _prettier_. How had they gotten this girl into their basement, playing video games with them?

After losing a fight, Ben offered to go upstairs and make pizza rolls for them. The Huxs were like his second parents, their kitchen was basically his kitchen, so it wasn’t uncommon for the boys to make themselves at home there. Surprisingly, Rey offered to go with him. The others started up an AI fourth fighter.

“So,” Ben said as the ascended the stairs. “Are you having fun?”

“No, I’m having the worst time.”

Ben panicked a moment before turning back to look at her and see that she was wearing a shit-eating grin.

“Hilarious. I was just trying to be polite.”

“I know Ben,” she said, giving him a playful shove with her elbow as they entered the kitchen. “It’s just so easy to tease you.”

Ben found himself smiling at her as he reached into the freezer to grab the box of pizza rolls. He systematically started the preheat on the oven, pulled a baking sheet out from a lower cabinet, and spread the rolls onto it.

“You’re making them in the oven, not the microwave? Woah, fancy,” she teased him, leaning on her elbows on the kitchen island.

“They’re better that way,” he said, winking at her before turning and putting the sheet in the oven. When had he ever _winked_ at someone before? He felt so stupid.

“Hello Ben,” Mr. Hux’s voice drawled as he came into the kitchen. “Oh, and who might this be?” he asked as he spotted Rey.

“Hi Mr. Hux,” Ben said. “This is Rey, she just moved here and started school with us this semester.”

“Well it’s lovely to meet you, Rey,” Mr. Hux said, reaching out to shake her hand. Mr. Hux lived in cardigans with patches on the elbows. He sort of looked like a ginger Mr. Rogers.

Rey had a look of confusion on her face as she accepted his handshake.

“I hope you can bestow some graceful, kind, feminine energy onto these boys. Bunch of animals, they are.”

“You’re one to talk, sir,” Ben said, rolling his eyes. Mr. Hux loved poking fun at them, and being poked at in return.

Mr. Hux let out a belly laugh at that. 

“I swear, you’re like your father’s clone sometimes,” he replied joyfully, filling up a glass of water at the sink. “I’ll be in the study with Maratelle. Rey, don’t let these boys harass you too badly.”

“I’ll keep them in line,” she said, catching on quickly to his playful energy.

“Atta girl,” he said with another laugh, making his way out of the kitchen.

After a few seconds, Rey scurried over to Ben to whisper.

“Wait…” she said quietly, “Hux is their _last_ name?”

“Yeah,” he said. After a moment, he realized why she was confused. “Hux goes by his last name because it’s way better than his first name. Only teachers and his parents call him by his real name.”

“What is it?”

Ben looked around them, pretending to scout out that the coast was clear.

“Armitage,” he said to her with a grin. 

“ _No_ ” she said with a giggle. “That’s awful!”

“Yeah”, he said, unable to keep himself from laughing along with her. “And I hate to burst your bubble, but Mitaka isn’t Mitaka’s first name either.”

“I _thought_ that was a weird one,” she said. “So what is it?”

“Ah, ah, ah,” he said. “I can’t give away everything at once. Then you won’t have a reason to come back.”

“I think I have plenty of reasons to come back,” she said, tilting her head to the side.

Ben was about to ask what she meant when Finn yelled up the stairs.

“Yo! Ben, Rey! Starting another round. You in?”

Ben quickly stepped back from her, startled out of their conversation.

“Yeah,” he shouted back, “one sec.”

“Do you want anything to drink while we’re up here?” he asked Rey.

“Just some water would be nice.”

He poured glasses of water for Rey and himself, sparkling water for Hux and Mitaka, and pulled a Coke out of the fridge for Finn.

Rey raised her eyebrows questioningly at him as she took two of the glasses to help carry them down.

“I know what they want,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. It would be hard not to know after 11 years of friendship.

He couldn’t figure out why, but her smile at him was particularly dazzling as she made her way to the basement stairs.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Finn, if I didn’t know any better, I would say that you don’t even know the rules to Yugioh!” Rey sputtered out as she grabbed an ineligible card he’d placed down and shoved it back into his hand. “You can’t just fucking summon Exodia whenever you want!”

“I do know the rules! They just don’t make any sense!” Finn sputtered in return.

“No one really plays by them anyway,” Mitaka said, shrugging.

Rey looked furious, and looked between Hux and Ben for support.

“And you two allow this?!”

Ben smiled, for some reason he found it incredibly endearing that she was getting so worked up over the rules to a children’s card game.

“To be fair,” Hux responded, “we haven’t played Yugioh since middle school, so it’s been a while.”

Rey rolled her eyes in a fashion so dramatic that Ben choked on a laugh that exploded out of his chest. He felt his face redden in embarrassment as he coughed it out. Hux raised his eyebrows at him for some reason.

“Well you didn’t have to vote for it in my poll if you didn’t know the rules,” she muttered darkly.

Ben had only voted for it because she had seemed so excited to suggest it in her first week of being in charge of the game poll. Finn had voted for MTG and Hux voted for Pokémon. Mitaka had also voted for Yugioh, though Ben assumed it was because he sucked at MTG and Pokémon.

So here they sat, in a four-player duel. Hux was sitting out, clearly enjoying how flustered Rey got when she had to remind them of certain obscure rules.

“I’m sending you all a PDF of the rules tonight,” she said at one point. “And the _proper_ mods for a free-for-all fourway.”

“Did I hear something about a fourway?”

Ben turned in his chair to see Poe Dameron standing behind him. Poe was a quintessential jock. Loud, boisterous, a bit dense, and remarkably immature. He usually ignored the existence of Ben and his friends, but for some reason over the past two years or so it seemed like he would go out of his way to torment them. Nothing especially cruel, but it was definitely annoying. Just snide remarks about how uncool they are, or dubious remarks about their lack of sex lives.

Mitaka’s face immediately dropped, and Ben recognized that he was going into his mode where he pretended he didn’t exist. 

“Yeah,” Rey said loudly, apparently unbothered by him. “Yugioh. These dolts don’t understand the mods needed–”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Poe interrupted, holding up a hand. “You mean to tell me that the only type of fourway these losers talk about is in a _card game_?”

Ben saw Rey’s expression harden quite suddenly upon hearing Poe call them losers.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a tone that indicated that she was not at all sorry, “but who are you?”

“Poe, Poe Dameron,” he replied, smiling and putting his hand out.

She ignored it the offered handshake.

“Is there something you wanted, Poe, Poe Dameron?” she asked tilting her head in a mockery of curiosity, “or did you just come over here to insult us?”

Ben had never seen Rey be anything but nice, so her ferocity took him by surprise. Her vigor was palpable… and… hot. Hux and Finn also looked taken aback, shocked into silence.

“Nah, babe,” Poe said, withdrawing his hand without dropping his smile. “Not you. Just these virgins. What did they do to get a pretty girl like to you sit with them anyway?”

“Come on, Poe,” Ben finally worked up the courage to say. “Don’t talk to Rey like that.”

“Rey, is it?” Poe said, looking back at her. “Why don’t you come sit at my table? Then you won’t have to listen to these nerds talk about Pokewars or whatever.”

Rey looked ready to combust. Ben saw her take a deep breath before placing her cards face down on the table and standing up to speak to Poe.

“First of all,” she said darkly, putting her palms down on the table to lean against it, “if you’re going to try to insult my friends, at least come up with something halfway intelligent. Listening to you is making me lose brain cells at a terrifyingly high rate. Secondly, I’m sitting with them because they’re decent human beings, something you clearly know nothing about. Thirdly, don’t presume to call be ‘babe’. Don’t presume to be friendly with me at all. And never presume that I would want to sit with you. I wouldn’t sit with you if you were the last person on Earth.”

Poe’s usually plastered cocky smile fell. Ben had never seen him so unsure of himself. He scoffed, then quickly regained his composure.

“Your friends, huh?” he said. “Good luck with that.”

He quickly looked from Rey to Finn before angrily stomping off.

“Hoolllyyyy shit, Rey,” Finn said, his eyes wide.

“Jesus Christ,” Hux mumbled, rubbing his temples with his fingers.

“What?” she asked, as if she had already forgotten about the last 45 seconds.

“You totally just pwned Poe Dameron!”

Ben groaned.

“Seriously Finn? We talked about using the P word. This isn’t 2005.”

“I’m trying to bring it back!” Finn argued.

“Can we focus on what’s important here?” Hux asked exasperatedly. “Rey, I appreciate that you stood up for us, but maybe in the future… don’t?”

“What?!” Rey asked angrily.

“Hux…” Ben said. 

“It’s just that we function best when we fly under the radar. When no one notices us. Dameron is only going to have more of a reason to harass us now,” Hux replied.

“You’re saying I should have just let him be an asshole?”

Ben agreed with Hux, but he also didn’t think Rey was wrong for speaking up. It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for him.

Rey looked at Ben, searching for support.

“I don’t know,” Ben said. “It was really cool of you to do that, Rey. And I’m sorry you had to be in the middle of that.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Rey said, frowning. “It’s not your fault. But maybe he’d stop bothering you guys if you actually stood up for yourselves for once.”

“But you do it so much better than us,” Ben said, the corner of his mouth quirking up, trying to lighten the mood.

He saw Rey try to fight a smile before it won out. 

“Only because you lot are a bunch of pussies,” she said, smiling down at her cards that she picked back up.

“Can’t argue with that,” Finn said, laughing.

“We’re pathetic,” Hux agreed.

“You’re our Yugi,” Ben told her.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You battle Kaiba for us,” he said, draping his arm around her shoulders.

She snorted.

“That was terrible. Please don’t insult Kaiba’s intelligence by comparing Poe to him.”

Everyone laughed, including Mitaka, who had finally emerged from his self-imposed energy-saving mode.

“Anyway, it’s your turn, Ben.”

He withdrew his arm from Rey’s shoulders (a bit regretfully) and made his play.

“I summon Blue Eyes White Dragon, with 3000 attack points... and I equip it with Mage Power, Axe of Despair, and Mask of Brutality. So now it’s at… three, four, five...it's at 6000 attack power. I destroy Rey’s face down monster and end my turn.”

Everyone at the table seemed impressed, including Rey. Her approval was the one that mattered most to him.

“Damn, Solo,” Mitaka said.

“Yeah,” Finn agreed.

“Wow,” Rey said with a reluctant look. “You’re good.”

Ben smiled, hoping he’d finally get a win against her.

“But,” she continued, now smiling a bit, “just not good enough.”

“Oh shit,” Hux said, suddenly invested in the game.

“I play Fissure, your Blue Eyes dies. I monster reborn, equip it with Malevolent Nuzzler, and summon Doomstar Magician with 1800 attack.”

Ben watched in awe as she completely annihilated him.


	3. Sports?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is going so well, until it isn't. Ben doesn't know what to think when Rey makes new friends. Surely she'll stop hanging out with him now...

“That can’t be right, the impedance should increase,” Rey said, rubbing her forehead with her hand. “If the density of the surrounding medium increases, the frequency should decrease, resulting in a higher impedance.”

“You’re right… maybe we misread the question?” Ben asked. It wasn’t often that a physics homework problem stumped them.

They were in their usual spot in Naboo’s public library. Neither of them could do homework somewhere too loud, like a coffee shop, so they frequented the library after school, where they would set up camp at a table until their homework was done. 

“Maybe…”

Ben watched her as she blew away a stray piece of hair from her face and reread the problem. He liked it when she furrowed her eyebrows in concentration.

“What are you looking at?” she suddenly asked.

“What? Oh… nothing…” he said, immediately looking down at his textbook, embarrassed to have been caught staring. He had forgotten that girls had better peripheral vision. He would need to be careful.

“There’s no possible explanation as to why there would be a decrease, the textbook must be wrong,” she said confidently after a few moments.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ben responded. He had already sent a number of emails to the publishing company of their physics textbook, pointing out mistakes.

“Well, I guess let’s leave that one blank and tell Mr. Ackbar tomorrow.”

“You’re coming to robotics club tomorrow, right?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she said with a stunning smile.

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Things were great for a few weeks. Wonderful, even. But then something happened, something changed. It didn’t take long for Rey to make friends that weren’t him, Finn, Hux, or Mitaka. Ben felt a pang of jealousy whenever he saw her walking down the hallway arm in arm with Rose, or chatting with some douchebags from the guy’s soccer team in the parking lot after school. Sure, she still hung out with him, but she increasingly spent more time with her other friends. Ben felt like he was just waiting for the next time he would see her again. She always seemed to have plans to rush to after doing their homework together.

Were he and his friends not good enough for her? Did she not like them anymore? Would she stop hanging out with them soon, now that she had friends who weren’t complete losers? He let these thoughts fester, scared that they would come to fruition. She still sat with them at lunch, but how much longer would it last? He finally makes a new friend, a _girl_ no less, and she would be taken away from him, just like that. Typical. 

He wondered if he should try to be cooler. What if he picked up a sport? He had never played any team sports, but he had been doing jiu jitsu four times a week since freshman year– his uncle had suggested it as a way relieve stress after school. And Ben liked how physical it was, yet disciplined. He ran and lifted weights a few days in week to stay in shape for it. It was probably too late to get involved in organized sports at school. He doubted any of the jocks would accept him anyway. Ben had no idea what people did after school if they weren’t doing homework or playing games. That was all he was familiar with. 

“Hey,” Rey said at lunch one day, “Phasma, Jess, Rose, Snap, and I are going to the mall after school today. You guys wanna come?”

They all looked at her for a moment, blinking in confusion.

“The mall?” Finn asked.

“Yeah, you know…” she replied, “big building, lots of stores, food court...”

“I know what the mall is,” he mumbled.

“Wanna come?” she asked again, looking around at the four of them.

“No thanks,” Mitaka said meekly. No surprise there. Rey didn’t seem surprised either.

“Hux, Finn, Ben?”

“I don’t have anything I need to buy,” Hux said.

“Me neither,” Finn agreed.

“You don’t have to buy anything,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Then why go?” Finn asked.

“To hang out!” she answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You know there’s more to life than gaming, right?”

“Hey, what’s wrong with gaming?” Mitaka asked.

“Nothing,” she sighed, sounding frustrated. “I just thought maybe you guys would want to do something else for a change.”

“Do you not like hanging out with us?” Ben asked nervously.

“This isn’t about that! This is about branching out… making new friends!”

They all sat in silence for a few seconds.

“But... I don’t think they like us,” Finn said.

“Who?”

“Those people you said. Phasma, Snap, Jess, Rose...”

“Do you even know them?” Rey asked.

“No…” Finn said.

“Well maybe if you got to know them they might actually like you.”

Hux and Finn looked at each other, struggling to come up with a response.

“Please, please, please…” she begged them.

“Alright, alright,” Hux said. “I’ll go.”

“I will too,” Finn said, looking rather reluctant to do so.

“Ben?” she asked, sending him a hopeful smile.

So this is what she wanted? To go hang out with other people at the _mall_? They didn’t even have a Gamestop there. It was clear she was trying to separate herself from them. Ben wasn’t prepared for that. He wasn’t going to put himself out there just to be crushed under her heel later.

“No,” he said firmly, looking down.

“Oh…” she said in a soft voice. He kept his eyes on the Catan board. “Why?”

He shrugged, fiddling with a settlement piece between his fingers.

“Don’t want to.”

If he had looked up, he would have seen how disappointed she was.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
From Rey  
**what’s wrong?**

The text came in physics class. He looked up to see Rey peering at him behind her shoulder from the second row with a questioning look.

To Rey  
**nothing, why**

From Rey  
**you seem mad or something**

To Rey  
**not mad**

He balled a piece of paper in his fist. So she was concerned now… when would that end? When would she stop caring about him?

She didn’t respond.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey!” Ben heard from behind him as he made his way to his car after school.

He recognized the voice as Rey’s before even turning around.

“Hey,” he said as she came running up. She looked adorable with her backpack bouncing around violently behind her as she ran.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah,” he said simply.

“Because you seemed weird at lunch. Are you sure you don’t want to come to the mall with us?”

He could see a group including Hux, Finn, and Phasma beginning to assemble back near the door of the school.

“Do you really even want me there?” he asked. He was sure they’d just gotten a pity invite since the original plan was to play Mario Kart today.

“What? Of course,” she said. She tilted her head at him.

“Why don’t you just go hang out with your friends,” he said dismissively. He began to turn back toward his car, but he felt a small hand grab his wrist, whirling him back around.

“Is there something wrong, here, Ben?” she asked. She didn’t seem concerned now. She seemed angry.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” he answered, twisting his wrist out of her grasp. “You don’t have to pretend to like me just because we invited you to sit with us at lunch.”

Her jaw dropped at that. Clearly she hadn’t expected him to see through her act.

“Ben just because I’ve made new friends doesn’t mean I don’t like you anymore! Is that what you think this is?!”

He didn’t answer. But yes, that’s exactly what he thought it was.

“I’ll have you know that it’s not a crime to make friends. It’s not a crime for people other than you and the guys to like me!”

“Doesn’t mean you have to whore yourself out.”

He regretted it the instant it came out of his mouth. Time stopped, as if even the universe was shocked by what he had just said to her.

_Fuck._

Her face contorted with pain, then anger. She took a step forward, and put a finger up to his chest.

“At least I have the ability to make friends. At least I won’t end up alone, playing video games in a basement.”

She lowered her finger. She was breathing heavy, filled with rage.

Ben dropped his gaze to the ground, unable to look at her anymore. He walked away, fighting back tears for the first time in a long time. He stomped to his car, threw his backpack in, and drove away as quickly as possible, determined to not look back at her.

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It only took him an hour to realize he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. He sat in his room, banging his head on his desk. There was no way she’d forgive him. He wanted to cry all over again. They’d become close, and he had ruined it.

He unlocked his phone, pulling up the Find My Friends app. She was still at the mall. It wasn’t like he was going to go to the mall and apologize, right? Especially in front of everyone. He sighed, laying his forehead back on the desk.

A light knock on his bedroom door signalled his mother’s arrival.

“Honey?” she asked, peeking in through the cracked door.

“Yeah?” he grunted.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You slammed the front door like you were mad at it.”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just an idiot.”

Leia stepped into his room, sitting on his bed.

“You are many things, Ben Solo. But you are far from an idiot.”

He let out another sigh. He wasn’t about to tell his mom the major way he fucked up. She would just yell at him anyway for upsetting a girl.

“Got into an argument with a friend,” he said simply.

“Who, Armitage?” she asked.

“No…”

“Finn?”

“What? No…”

“Surely not Dopheld?”

“No! None of them.”

He flipped his head over to face the other direction so he could see his mom. She looked confused.

“Then who?” she asked.

“Another friend,” he said.

“Sorry, dear, but since when do you have other friends?”

“Mom!”

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, raising her hands up. “So what happened?”

“I got… angry I guess. She’s been hanging out with us lately…”

“She?”

“Yes, mom. She,” he quipped.

“Ok, ok, give me a break, it’s not like you’ve ever brought a girl home, or even talked about one.”

He tried not to wallow in embarrassment.

“Well she’s new, just moved here. She’s been hanging out with us. But I think she’s going to stop, she has normal friends now.”

“What do you mean by normal?”

“Friends that aren’t just a bunch of lame nerds.”

“Ben, honey,” his mom said. “I’m not going to lie, you and your friends definitely fall on the ‘nerd’ end of the spectrum–”

“Wow, thanks.”

“Let me finish!” she continued. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t caring, generous, smart young men that anyone would be lucky to spend time with. And if your new friend doesn’t see that, then that’s her problem, not yours.”

“It just sucks,” was all he could respond.

Leia reached over to rub his back soothingly.

“While I’m glad to hear you made a new friend, I’m also sorry that this is stressing you out,” she said.

“Whatever, I’ll deal with it.”

“I know you will,” Leia said, giving him a final pat on the back, standing up. “Just give her a chance, Ben. She might surprise you.”

Ben wondered what she meant by that as he watched her leave and shut his bedroom door behind her.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ben couldn’t let this sit overnight. Eventually, a bit after dinner, he pulled out his phone again, and checked Find My Friends. She seemed to be in a residential area, in a neighborhood not too far from his. Would it be creepy to show up at her house? They’d never exchanged addresses or anything. So it would be kind of stalkery to just show up at her place.

Ben shook his head, deciding that apologizing quickly was more important than seeming a little creepy. He took off from his room, shouting to his parents that he would be back before curfew. He figured his mom would probably be able to guess where he was going.

He hopped on his bike, keeping his phone on in his pocket so he could use the app again when he got closer to her supposed location. He tried to formulate what he was going to say to her on his ride over, but he was at a loss. He couldn’t recall ever fucking up this badly before, and thus had never had to craft this magnanimous of an apology.

Before he knew it, he was pulling up to a nice house with light grey siding and holiday lights still up. He looked at the app again, confirming that this was the right place. He nervously brought up her contact, and called her.

It rang, and rang, and rang.

She didn’t answer. She also didn’t have her voicemail box set up. He’d have to help her do that.

He didn’t give up. He composed a text to her.

To Rey  
**hey, i know ur mad at me. but i think im outside ur house. i came to apologize**

He waited a few moments after hitting send. Every second that passed made him increasingly anxious. What if she never spoke to him again?

After a minute, which felt like an hour, Ben saw a curtain in one of the second floor windows get drawn back. Rey’s head popped into the window, and she looked right at him. It was hard to tell from his distance, but she didn’t look pleased.

From Rey  
**i’ll be right down**

Ben sighed in relief. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had just left him to stand out in the cold. After another minute, the front door of her house opened. He stayed frozen on the sidewalk, unsure of whether she would let him in or if she would make him stand where he was.

“Solo,” she said after a few moments, with a sharp sting in her voice, “get in here.”

He ran up to the house and onto the porch. He wiped his shoes on the doormat, and looked her in the eyes as she beckoned him inside. She was shivering just from having the door open for a a few seconds. Ben realized she must not be used to the cold, having moved from Jakku. He watched her shut the door, then turn back to face him. She didn’t look happy with him.

“Look, Rey,” he started, but he was distracted by her body. Specifically, she was in pajama shorts, and was still shivering from the cold let in from outside. 

_Quick, focus on how cold she is, not her legs._

“Do you want my scarf?” he asked, unwinding it from around his neck to offer it to her.

She rolled her eyes, but grabbed the scarf from him anyway.

“Come with me,” she said, leading him into a formal living room. It had an ornate fireplace and a grand piano. Ben was a little taken back, he had always kind of got the impression that her family didn’t have a lot of money. She was still using her crappy Game Boy, she wore simple clothes... This house was definitely fancy, fancier than the Huxs even. Ben was suddenly even more confused about her.

She sat down on the white leather sofa, and spread his scarf out over her legs. She looked pointedly at one of the armchairs closer to the fire place, so Ben sat there.

“So,” she said, looking at him with a deadly glare. She sure was terrifying when she was angry.

“Rey,” he said, “I am so, so sorry. What I said to you was so uncalled for, and not true at all, and I don’t even know why I said it.”

She looked at him as if she didn’t believe him.

“It came out of me and as soon as I said it, I regretted it. I didn’t mean it at all. You’re like the coolest person ever and I think I was just nervous that you wouldn’t want to hang out with me anymore.”

“You were a real asshole about it,” she responded simply.

He winced.

“I know. And I know what I said was super sexist, and just straight up mean. I’m really, really sorry.”

Rey looked at him for a second, and Ben hoped she was considering his apology.

“Yeah,” she finally said quietly. “It was sexist. And cruel, Ben. I just moved here you know... And all of you have been going to school together your whole lives. I don’t see what’s wrong with trying to make friends. And I certainly don’t see what makes that ‘whoring myself out’”.

Ben winced again at the reminder of his words.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He looked down at his hands. His apology had sucked. She would probably never forgive him.

After a few moments, he heard a shuffling from her location on the sofa. He looked up in time to see her stand up and approach the chair he was sitting.

“I forgive you, Ben,” she said. She still didn’t look happy, but Ben was just glad to hear her say those words. “And I’m sorry for what I said too. I didn’t mean it.”

“What you said?” he asked.

 _Oh_. 

In his distress over what he had said to her, he had forgotten what she had said in return. Something about dying alone playing video games or something.

“No, that’s alright,” he said. “It’s probably true.”

She shook her head then, and her angry glare finally relaxed.

“No,” she said firmly, walking even closer to him and kneeling before his seated position in the armchair. “It’s not true at all. It was really awful of me to say that to you.”

Ben shrugged, and looked down at the floor. Her proximity to him made his brain short circuit. 

“Ben, you’re normally very sweet,” she continued. “And I know for a fact that you’ll never be alone.”

He looked back up at her, surprised to find her gazing at him tenderly. He didn’t know what to do with that kind of statement. What did she mean by it?

“Neither will you,” is what his brain supplied, knowing it was true. Rey was too amazing, too beautiful, too funny, too kind to ever be alone.

They looked at each other for a moment, neither speaking. Ben suddenly became conscious of his breathing, and his pulse.

Rey stood up, and beckoned him to do so as well.

“Stand up.”

He obeyed.

She reached her arms out, an invitation for a hug. He didn’t even have time to register his excitement before he wrapped her in his arms. She was quite a bit shorter than him, so his arms wrapped easily around her shoulders, and hers around his waist. Her head seemed to perfectly rest against his chest. When she gave him a squeeze, Ben felt a shiver bolt through his stomach. 

“Are we good?” she asked as she leaned back, with her hands still on his waist.

“Yeah, definitely, I’m sorry,” he rushed out, his words running together.

She laughed, and Ben felt the tips of his ears get hot.

“Ok,” she said. “Just don’t be a dick again.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

“I think you owe me something, though,” she said, raising a teasing eyebrow at him.

“What?”

“You owe me a non-gaming date.”

“A… a what?” Ben took a step back. He was sure he must have heard her incorrectly.

“We need to hang out sometime, doing a non-gaming related activity.”

_Oh, she just wants to hang out. Idiot._

“Um… ok,” he said, running a hand through his hair. Where should he take her? 

“You wanna go to the mall?” he asked, blurting out the first thing he could think of.

He was embarrassed when she laughed again.

“No, Ben. I won’t make you go to the mall. There must be something you like to do!”

He thought for a moment. All of his time was spent with Hux, Mitaka, and Finn. And they never did anything besides gaming. He reached further back, back to when he hung out more with his dad.

“How do you feel about hockey?”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That’s how Ben and Rey ended up at a minor league hockey game that weekend. His dad got free tickets since his auto parts company was one of the local team’s sponsors, and he was happy to give them to Ben, especially when he heard he was taking a girl. He had to listen to a solid 15 minutes of an awkward sex talk, yelling over his dad the entire time that she was just a friend. It was worth it though, to get the tickets and have Rey cuddled up next to him at the game.

He still didn’t really understand the rules of hockey. Though Han had explained them thousands of times at the games he took him too when he was younger, he really wasn’t a sports guy. That didn’t matter. When Rey cheered, he did. When she booed, he booed. It was fun watching her yell at the ref and high five other spectators around them when their team scored. She fed him popcorn by throwing it up in the air to catch with his mouth, and he wrapped his scarf around her when her nose turned a bit too pink in the chilly arena.

“That was amazing, Ben,” she said, throwing her arm around his waist as they walked back toward his car in the lot after the game. 

“I’m glad you had fun,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulder as they trudged through the snow. “Are you hungry?”

“Only always,” she said, rolling her eyes, much to his amusement.

“The only thing near here is an Olive Garden. You down?”

“Yeessss!” she exclaimed triumphantly into the night sky, making Ben laugh.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

“I realized I never actually asked you… why did your family move?”

“Oh,” she said, her face suddenly dropping. She looked down at her food, and ran her fork through her pasta.

“Actually…” she started. She paused, as if her breath had caught on her words. She looked back up at him.

“Ben, can you keep a secret?”

“Of course, anything.”

“I’m just not ready to tell anyone else yet. I will eventually, I’m just not ready.”

What was is that was making her so anxious? Whatever it was, Ben would take it to the grave.

“I understand. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“I do want to,” she insisted, putting her fork down. “You’re my best friend.”

Ben’s heart burst. He tried to play it cool, like his throat hadn’t just gone dry.

“You’re– you’re–,” he stuttered, “you’re my best friend too. Don’t tell the guys.”

She giggled at that, and Ben’s heart skipped a beat.

“I won’t,” she said, giving him a warm smile. He could run a marathon with the pure radiant energy he absorbed from her smiles.

“Well…” she started, looking back down at her plate. “You know I used to live in Jakku…”

Ben nodded. She looked back up at him briefly before looking back down. 

“I was actually in the foster system there. Since the age of four.”

Ben couldn’t really even digest that statement before she continued.

“So I kind of bounced around from foster home to foster home for a while. Well, up until a few months ago actually.”

Ben’s jaw dropped. She didn’t have a family? She hadn’t even had a permanent home… Suddenly the temperature in the restaurant dropped a few degrees. How could someone so lovely go through something like that?

“Wow,” he mumbled.

Rey sent him a small smirk, and continued.

“Yeah. Anyway, I was actually adopted in November, by a woman, Amilyn. She lives here, obviously. She’s a little older and never had any kids, and she wanted to help someone like me go to college, or get a good start on adulthood, or whatever. She also has a few scholarships in her name. She looked in a few systems, including Jakku. I’m not sure why she chose me, but she did. So I finished out last semester in Jakku, then moved in with Amilyn right before Christmas. And now here I am.”

She said this all quietly, and a bit rushed, as if she was embarrassed. Ben took a few moments to process everything she had said. Rey had looked back up at him now, as if waiting for a reaction.

“Wait… Amilyn Holdo?”

“You know her?” she asked, with a shocked expression.

“Yeah!” he said. “She works with my mom.”

“Oh,” she said. “She hasn’t mentioned you…”

“I mean… I don’t see her that often… she and my mom work in different offices within the company. I see her maybe like once a year. I had no idea she was adopting.”

“Wow. This town really is close-knit,” she said with a chuckle.

“So that was her house we were in?”

“Yeah, you didn’t know?”

“No… I’ve only ever seen her at their company summer barbecue or when she drops by my house to talk with my mom.”

It took Ben another minute to remember what else Rey had said.

“Does… is Amilyn nice?” he asked.

“Yeah, she is,” Rey said with a sigh. “It’s weird, I guess. It’s the first time I’ve lived without any other foster siblings. And it’s weird living with someone with so much money,” she said. “But she’s been really nice, buying me school supplies, a computer, basically anything I need. She even bought me a smartphone. She won’t even let me get a job to pay for the stuff, and I’ve been working since I was 12. It’s just all… so different.”

“I’m glad she’s good to you,” Ben said quietly, matching her soft tone.

“Yeah,” she said. “I should be really thankful.”

“You... aren’t?”

“No, I am. I really am,” she corrected herself. “It’s just weird trying to connect with her. Am I supposed to treat her like my mother? I don’t want to take advantage of her... And I’m nervous because she could always just send me back…”

Ben reached over the table, pulling apart her hands she was wringing together. He held one firmly. 

“She won’t,” he said confidently. “You’re amazing. And Amilyn is super cool. I’m sure she’s crazy about you. There’s no way she would ever even think of sending you back.”

A corner of her mouth quirked up as she looked down at their joined hands. 

“I hope you’re right,” she whispered. “You’re probably right.”

Ben couldn’t help but graze his thumb across her knuckles before he pulled his hand away.

“Jakku sucked so badly,” she said, covering her face with her hands and smiling in a grimacing sort of way. “I had a few people that were kind of my friends, but other than that it absolutely sucked. Did you know I had never seen so many plants in my entire life until I moved here?”

“Just wait until winter’s over,” he said. “Everything will be green again.”

Her eyes widened at that, and Ben knew without a doubt that he would want to be with her every second during the spring, watching her as the trees grew new leaves and the flowers bloomed. 

“Thanks for telling me this,” he said as gently as possible.

“Thanks for being so cool,” she said in response. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“No,” he argued. “It’s awesome. I mean, not the Jakku part. That you got to leave and come here. And that Amilyn is nice. And that now we all get to hang out with you.”

She looked at him tenderly after his awkward confession.

“I’m glad I can hang out with you too.”


	4. Pokémon Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey grow closer than ever. Hell, things are going magnificently. But then the subject of prom is brought up, and Poe makes another appearance.

Ben drove home from school with the radio turned all the way up. He couldn’t wipe the stupid grin off of his face, it was embarrassing. The guys were having a blast making fun of him recently for the sharp change in his normal moody countenance, but he found that he didn’t really care. He was… happy. Ever since their mutual apologies and day out together, Ben and Rey were getting along spectacularly again. He hadn’t lied when he told her she was his best friend. She seemed to understand him better than the guys who had known him his whole life. Every minute of every day was consumed by her– whether by her presence or just in his thoughts. 

She was far more popular than him, it seemed like she had plans every single day. Yet she always managed to reserve time to spend alone with him. It made him feel… special. Which was a weird thing to think. Ben wasn’t really sure to do with all the weird things he felt when he was with Rey. It made him feel vulnerable, like someone would jump out at him at any second and expose that it was all just a prank, that Rey didn’t really like him at all.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So,” Han asked him one day at the dinner table. “How are things with Rey?”

“Fine,” Ben said, shrugging.

“You’re going on a date tomorrow, right?”

“It’s not a date, we’re just friends,” Ben repeated for what felt like the millionth time.

He saw his mom and dad look at each other, and rolled his eyes. They were so obvious.

“Sure kid, not a date,” his dad said, the corner of his mouth quirked up.

“Is everything going well for her?” Leia asked. “Amilyn says that she seems to have made a lot of friends…”

“Yeah, she has,” Ben answered simply. He didn’t know why his parents always pestered him about Rey. They never bothered him about his other friends.

“You know, honey,” his mom continued, “I’m very proud of you for being so welcoming to her. Amilyn told me that she had a pretty rough life back in Jakku.”

Ben scowled. He didn’t like the idea of Amilyn telling everyone in town about Rey’s past. It seemed like she considered it a private thing. She still hadn’t even told any other of her friends beside him. He was sure she would be mortified to hear that Amilyn was discussing her situation with her random coworkers.

“I think that’s kind of private, Mom,” he said angrily.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Leia said, “I didn’t realize it was a sensitive subject.”

“Well maybe you shouldn’t be sticking your nose into everyone’s business.”

“That’s not fair, Ben,” his dad said sternly. “Amilyn cares a lot about Rey and you know that she and your mom are good friends. I’m sure she has a lot of questions as a new parent, and thought your mom would be a good person to ask.”

After a moment, Ben realized that he had never thought about it that way. Not only was this situation new for Rey, but Amilyn had never had any kids. All of a sudden she had a high-schooler with no previous parenting experience.

“I guess,” he mumbled.

“I won’t pry for any details, but if Amilyn comes to me, I’m going to listen to her,” Leia asserted in her most powerful maternal tone. One that Ben knew not to argue with.

Ben nodded, keeping his eyes locked on his plate of pork chops and broccoli. 

“I’m just glad you’re friends, is all I’m saying,” his mom said more gently.

Ben stuffed a broccoli floret in his mouth, and thought about Rey.

“Me too.”

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The more Ben thought about it, the more he realized just how special his time with Rey was. It was kind of a miracle that she got out of Jakku, that she happened to be adopted by someone in his neighborhood, that she happened to be in the same grade as him. It seemed like fate, or something like that. Like the universe had brought her to him for some reason. 

She had started running with him after school sometimes. At first he was thrilled, but quickly became very distracted to see her in her tight athletic leggings. He loved watching her warm breath steam up in the cold winter air, loved watching her rub her hands together through her mittens. She was always cold, must be a Jakku thing. He always gave her a big hug when they met up to warm her up before they started their run. He had to slow his pace a little, seeing as her strides were only about half the length of his, but they ran longer, usually deep in conversation. It was on their runs that they grew to know everything about each other.

She told him that she used to climb a lot in Jakku. At first he thought she meant rock walls, but she told him about the rundown buildings and fences she climbed to get to work on time, or sometimes just for fun. He couldn’t really relate, but he told her about the indoor rock climbing place about an hour away. One weekend, he drove her there. He knew she had asked him just because he had a car, but he still felt special being the person she picked to go with her. He didn’t know a single thing about climbing, but that didn’t stop her from getting him into shoes and a harness and sending him up a beginner wall. He was embarrassed to be so bad at something, especially in front of the staff member belaying him, who was probably a solid 25 years old and kind of looked like Brad Pitt. But Rey yelled encouragements at him the whole time, which made his heart flutter. It was that Saturday afternoon that he discovered that he had a fear of heights, though he tried not to let it show. When he made it safely back to the ground, slightly shaking, he tried to play it cool. He told her he had a cramp in his forearm, and offered to watch her climb so he could see how it was done. She beamed at that, and scurried up the facility’s most difficult path in about 26 seconds flat. Even Brad Pitt was impressed.

“That was fun!” she said, once she rejoined Ben on the ground.

“You are _incredible_ ,” he said, meaning every ounce of it.

She just shrugged.

“I like climbing.”

“Yeah, seems like it,” he laughed, reaching his hand up to tuck a piece of loose hair behind her ear.

He watched her swallow thickly.

“Well, I’ll bring you here anytime you want.”

“Ben, are you sure? You didn’t seem to like it very much…”

“Yeah, well I like watching you do it,” he said, immediately blushing. “And maybe I can get better.”

He ran a hand through his hair and looked around for anything that might allow him to switch topics.

“Hey, uh, maybe we should check out their multipasses? Might be able to get a better rate that way.”

“Yeah, sure,” she responded quietly, letting him lead them to the desk.

_That was a close one._

Rey ended up buying a membership after a thorough amount of convincing from Ben that Amilyn would be happy she bought it using her card. Ben wished he could make her misplaced guilt disappear. He also wished he could spoil her silly after the life she’d had.

On their next run, Ben told Rey all about his love for jiu jitsu. She was extremely interested, and Ben promised to bring her to the gym sometime. There were a few women at his gym, but Ben found that he wanted to teach her himself. He wanted to get her in a gi, see her barefoot. Maybe even roll her under him on the mat…

He tripped over a bump in the sidewalk, tumbling to the ground. Rey helped him up.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It happened at lunch one day in March.

“Hey, are you guys going to prom?” Rey asked.

Finn snorted, and Ben laughed. None of them looked up from their gameboys, all linked up for some solid Pokémon Red. Rey’s device had finally bit the dust a few weeks prior.

“What?”

“Why would _we_ go to _prom_?” Hux asked. 

“Uh… why wouldn’t you?” she asked. Ben looked up to see her tilting her head in confusion.

“Prom is stupid,” Finn said. “It’s just a bunch of popular kids dressing up and awkwardly dancing together. No thanks.”

“I’d rather die,” Mitaka agreed.

“Ok,” she said, “first of all, Dopheld, that’s dramatic.”

The rest of the guys sniggered as Mitaka frowned. Ever since Rey had gotten him to admit his first name to her, she loved using it to tease him.

“Second of all, have you guys ever been? How do you know?”

“We just know,” Finn said stubbornly. 

“Well Rose has been telling me that it’s really fun!”

“Of course _Rose_ has fun,” Hux said, rolling his eyes. “Everyone likes Rose.”

“Well Rose likes you guys too!” she tried to convince them.

It was true that they had hung out with her a few times. Rey had been successful in getting them to join her when she got together with other people, like Rose, or Phasma, or sometimes even a few guys from the basketball team, which was bizarre. Even more bizarre was that they… weren’t half bad, once you got to know them.

“And I bet you it would be fun if you brought dates!” she continued.

Mitaka choked on a piece of freeze-dried lotus root at the suggestion. Hux finally paused their game and looked up at her.

“Dates?” he asked curiously.

“Yeah, if you went with one it would probably be more fun.”

“Listen, Rey,” Finn said, leaning forward onto the table with his elbows. “Look at us. Do we look like the type of guys who could get dates to prom?”

Rey frowned at that. She was always an optimist, something that Ben loved about her.

“Of course you do,” she argued. “I can help you!”

Hux glared at her skeptically, and Ben couldn’t help but join. None of them had even been on a date before. They were virginal nerds through and through. Ben didn’t know the first thing about asking someone out. Besides, the only person Ben would want to go to prom with was Rey, and she was probably going to go with some jock or something.

“And how would you help us?” Finn asked, narrowing his eyes in scrutiny.

“I can talk you up to my friends! They will all eventually be looking for dates. You have a while, prom isn’t until May.”

“I don’t know,” Hux said, shaking his head.

“Come on,” she said, “I bet you there are girls just _dying_ for someone to ask them to prom.”

Ben wondered if she was one of them.

Mitaka was blushing just at the talk of asking someone to prom, but still looked interested, much to Ben’s surprise. The guys looked around at each other. Rey had gotten them to do all sorts of crazy things since they became friends with her. And so far, all of them had turned out pretty fun. This, however, was the craziest by far. By definition, they were not the type to go to prom. 

“I know for a fact that Rose was checking you out the other day, Hux,” Rey persisted.

Hux’s eyebrows ascended so far up his forehead Ben was convinced they would take flight.

“She – what?” he sputtered.

“You heard me,” she said smugly, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms across her chest.

“I’m sure you must be mistaken…” Hux croaked out.

“And actually I think Phasma has a thing for you, Mitty,” Finn added.

Mitaka turned bright red, and Ben felt bad for him. He saw him sink into his chair a little further. Not only was Phasma a girl, but she was just about the most intimidating girl in the whole school. If _he_ was scared of her, Mitaka was probably _petrified_.

“What about Ben?” Finn asked.

Ben froze.

“What _about_ Ben?” Rey asked.

“Is there anyone that likes him?” Hux elaborated.

“Oh,” she said quickly, her eyes wide. “Oh, uh, I’m not sure,” she added quietly, biting her bottom lip.

Ben was sure now that he was the one blushing. He looked down at his hands in his lap. Of course no one liked him. What was there to like about him? His big nose? His embarrassingly prominent ears? His inability to hold a conversation without bringing up Lord of the Rings?

His train of thought was interrupted when Hux coughed loudly. Ben looked up at the signal to see Poe Dameron walking toward him.

_Great. Just what we need when I already feel like shit._

“Hey,” Poe said, as he shuffled closer. His gaze darted around the table, then around the cafeteria, as if gauging whether he was being watched.

Ben, Finn, Hux, and Mitaka looked at each other. This was usually the point where he would start making fun of them, but Poe was silent.

“Yes, Poe?” Rey asked gently, a few moments of uncomfortable quiet tension later.

Ben was surprised, and looked between her and Poe. Why was she suddenly being patient with him? She had ripped him to shreds the last time he had come up to their lunch table.

“I… um…I guess… well…” he stuttered. Ben had never seen him this flustered before.

He glanced over to Rey, who was smiling and nodding at him. What the hell was going on?

“I just wanted to come over to apologize, I guess,” he finally mumbled, looking down at the floor. “I’ve been kind of a dick to you guys for a while, and that wasn’t cool.”

The table was silent. Ben couldn’t tell if this was some type of practical joke or not. Making their lives miserable had always been one of Poe’s favorite activities, though he hadn’t done it since Rey yelled at him that one time.

The other guys looked equally confused, and no one said anything.

“Thanks, Poe,” Rey said, looking around the table pointedly.

“Yeah, I guess,” Ben offered. He still wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

Hux could only nod. Mitty remained silent and motionless.

Poe seemed to accept that, and nodded in return. Ben saw him look over to Finn for a moment before he flattened his lips and gave an awkward wave as he sauntered away.

“What the fuck was that?” Hux asked for all of them, looking at Rey.

Rey merely shrugged, and took a sip of her water.

Ben wasn’t convinced a second by her nonchalance. She had to have something to do with it. Poe would never just come out of nowhere and apologize for something.

“Maybe he finally realized how much of an asshole he’s been,” Finn said after a moment.

“Unlikely,” Ben answered. “He’s probably just bullshitting us.”

“I don’t think so,” Rey said, shaking her head with a slight frown.

“Why?” Mitaka asked.

She shrugged again. “I don’t know, he seemed sincere.”

Rey definitely was involved. She wasn’t very good at lying, and she was adorable when she tried.

“I got paired up with him for the oral history project,” Finn said. “He’s actually been surprisingly ok.”

“That’s weird,” Hux surmised.

“Yeah,” Finn agreed, looking at his hands.

Hux unpaused their game, but Ben couldn’t keep his eyes off of Rey. Was she friends with… _Poe_? The obnoxious fuckwad that was simultaneously the most popular guy in school? Ben didn’t like that one bit. A big part of him was burning inside of him, though he couldn’t figure out why.


	5. Dungeons & Dragons

They were driving home from the rock climbing gym one day when Rey brought it up again.

“So,” she asked, holding her hands up against the heating vents. “Are you going to prom?”

“Oh…” he said, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Uh… I’m not sure.”

“Well are you going to ask someone to go with you?”

“Probably not.”

“Why not?”

_Because I’m too pussy to ask you. And I heard you were going with Jak from the basketball team._

“Don’t really have anyone to ask.”

“Really?” she questioned him. “Not even a friend?”

_I don’t have any friends besides you and the guys._

“No.”

“That can’t be right…” she said. “I’m sure there’s _someone_ you could ask.”

Ben could tell she wasn’t going to give up. She’d been trying to get them all to agree to go to prom for weeks now.

“Well,” he conceded. “I guess there is someone. But I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want to go with me.”

He felt Rey’s eyes on him, burning a hole right through to his soul.

“And why is that?”

Ben couldn’t think of an answer. So he just shrugged.

“I think she’s she wants to go with someone else anyway,” he said, at least being truthful about that.

“O- Oh…” she said simply, and Ben could see her quickly face back toward the dash out of his peripheral vision.

She was silent for the rest of the car ride. Ben put on her favorite radio station– the one that played soft alternative rock, but she didn’t even sing along like she normally did.

_Did I say something wrong? Does she really care that much if I go to prom or not? Surely she would be focused on her date anyway… she wouldn’t even notice if I was there or not._

She finally looked at him again when he pulled up in front of her house.

“Well, thanks again for climbing with me,” she said pleasantly, as if they hadn’t just ridden home in awkward silence.

“No problem. Are we still on for jiu jitsu tomorrow?”

“Oh…” she said, looking out the window. “Um… I think I might be busy tomorrow actually.”

“Ok, how about Monday?”

“I’ll… I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

Did she… not want to hang out with him?

_Chill, Ben. Don’t get pissy about nothing like last time. She’s probably just busy._

“Ok,” he said simply. 

Usually this was the point she’d lean toward him from the side to give him a one-armed side hug before hopping out of the car. But she just gave him a nod instead.

“I’ll see you later,” she said. She didn’t even wait for him to respond before climbing out and shutting the passenger door behind her.

He waited as he always did for her to get into her house. He waited for her goodbye wave, but it never came. She just went inside without a second look back at him.

_Well shit. Maybe she is upset. What did I do?_

Ben spent the rest of the weekend stressing about it. But when Monday came, and they all sat down at the lunch table, everything seemed to be normal. She sat next to him, as always. They talked about physics, as always. She leaned into him to whisper to him and ask him to team up with her against Hux, as always. 

She ended up going to jiu jitsu with him on Monday anyway. Ben didn’t know whether he should bring up how upset she was on Saturday… but he figured he shouldn’t touch it since everything seemed to be back to normal. As far as jiu jitsu went, she was learning the techniques rather quickly, which didn’t surprise him. She was good at everything, even something that had taken him years to get good at. The best days were when there were no instructors available and he got to teach her or spar with her, although it took a monumental amount of concentration to keep from getting aroused as they rolled around on the floor together. Sometimes they would end up in a hold where his face was right up in her neck, and he had to keep himself from nuzzling into it. And he had to think about distinctly unsexy things whenever she wrapped his legs around him. Every time they went to the gym together Ben had to engage in a mental battle with his dick. He had to make excuses to have a water break whenever he lost to it. The worst part is she didn’t even seem remotely affected by it all. That stung a little.

After a tough session, they were both leaning against the wall, drinking water and letting their heart rates settle.

“That was fun,” Rey said, smiling at him.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he responded. “You’re way better than when I’m first started. I’m kind of jealous.”

She smirked.

“I used to wrestle with my foster brothers a lot. It built character. But this is hard. I don’t know how you think of the right move to use so quickly.”

“Years of practice,” he said. “You’re doing great.”

A little overheated, he pushed himself off the wall to loosen the belt of his gi and slipped the upper half of it off, letting it hang by his waist. It felt good to get the sweaty material off of his skin.

When he turned back, Rey was looking at him with wide eyes.

_Shit. I’m so sweaty. I must look disgusting. Quick, distract her so she forgets how grossed out she is by you._

“You hungry? We could go grab something.” 

He knew she was always hungry, so it was his go-to tactic to distract her.

“What?” she asked, blinking a few times.

“Food? Wanna go get some?” he repeated.

“Oh! Yes! I mean, yeah sure. Let me just change and text Amilyn…” she said as she started practically ran toward the women’s locker room.

_Great, I made her uncomfortable. Should have kept my gi on._

He made his way to the men’s locker room, and decided to do a quick rinse in the shower so that he could hopefully avoid disgusting her any more than he already had.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The guys had just wrapped up their D&D night (every other Wednesday, in the Huxs’ basement), when Finn brought it up.

“Sooo…” Finn said slowly. “Prom?”

“Nooo,” Ben groaned, “not you too.”

“What?”

“Why is everyone so obsessed with prom?”

“I’m not obsessed. I’m just thinking about going,” Finn responded.

“Me too, actually,” Hux said, leaning back in his chair.

Ben couldn’t believe his friends.

“ _Why?_ ”

Hux shrugged.

“Could be fun,” he said simply.

“He just wants to go with Rose,” Finn scoffed.

Hux went a little red in the cheeks at that.

“Are you into her?” Mitty asked.

“Uh, yeah, I guess,” Hux mumbled, picking at his fingernails.

Ben had never really even imagined Hux with someone like Rose, but he _had_ seen them make eyes at each other the last few times they’d hung out.

“You should ask her to go with you,” Ben said. Though he still wasn’t convinced on the prom idea, he still wanted his friend to be happy. And no one had ever really reciprocated any of their crushes before.

“You think?” Hux asked, looking up at them, with a glimmer of hope.

“Definitely,” Finn said reassuringly. “The worst thing that can happen is that she says no, and then we could just go together or not go and play video games instead.”

“I suppose…” Hux said.

“I kinda think we should all go,” Mitaka suddenly said.

Ben felt his eyebrows raise at light speed.

“You do?”

“Yeah,” he continued, putting his dice in their baggy. “I don’t know. I mean we’re only in high school once. Might as well just go and see what it’s like. We don’t have to go next year if we end up hating it.”

For once, Mitaka made a little bit of sense. Ben was certain Leia would be over the moon with joy if she found out he was going to prom. She was always harping on about him taking advantage of stereotypical high school experiences.

“Wouldn’t it be kind of lame if we go without dates though?” Ben asked, suddenly nervous that he would be the only one either dateless or not going.

“Well it sounds like Hux might go with Rose,” Finn argued. “What about you, Mitty?”

“Oh,” he stuttered, not quite prepared to be put on the spot. “I suppose I could… try to ask someone. Rey said that Phasma would probably go with me if I asked.”

Ben was surprised. Mitty would have passed out if someone had suggested he go on a date not even a year ago. Something about his friendship with Rey was making him open up. It was really quite astonishing.

“Cool,” Finn responded, seemingly equally impressed by his friend. 

“What about you, Ben?” Hux asked, finally turning the attention to him.

“What _about_ me?” he asked. He knew exactly what he was asking, but didn’t know how to answer it. He could feel the tips of his ears heating up violently.

“Is there anyone you like?”

Finn let out what sounded like a chuckle but transformed so quickly into a cough that Ben couldn’t tell if he was laughing or not.

“I… yeah. There is someone...”

Ben saw Mitty smile as he got up from the table to throw away an empty bag of chips.

“So why don’t you ask them?” Finn suggested.

“I don’t know,” Ben said, looking down at his hands. “I don’t think she feels the same way about me.”

“Don’t be like that, Ben,” Hux told him, “You’re a great guy. I’m sure she would want to go to prom with you at least.”

“How do you know?” he asked, scowling.

Hux shrugged again.

“Just a hunch,” he said. Ben saw Finn elbow him under the table. What was up with them?

“Well what about you?” Ben aimed at Finn. “Are you asking someone?”

Finn sighed.

“Unfortunately the only guy I like is straight, so that’s never going to happen.”

“Who is it?” Mitty asked.

“Uh… I don’t wanna say,” Finn said. He looked embarrassed.

“Come on, Big Deal,” Ben encouraged him. He might feel more comfortable telling the guys about his attraction to Rey if someone else talked about their crush first.

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” Finn insisted. “Besides, it’s a lost cause anyway. I’ll probably just go alone. Or wait to see if there are any desperate girls who don’t mind going with a gay guy as a friend.”

“How is it that you have managed to avoid being a gay best friend for this long?” Hux asked.

“Beats me,” Finn said, smiling. “But I guess being a nerd has kept me from falling victim.”

“Damn,” Ben said, reflecting on their conversation. “Since when do we… like… _like_ people and actually do something about it?”

“I guess since now,” Hux responded. “That settles it, I’m asking Rose to prom. You all can bite me.”

“Good for you,” Mitty congratulated him.

“Nuh uh uh,” Hux told him back, “That means you have to ask Phasma.”

Mitaka turned an even pastier version of white at the suggestion. Ben didn’t know if he was quite there yet. It would take a LOT of coercion to get him there. They would all have to help.

“And what about this girl you like, Ben?” Finn asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I _really_ like her. And I don’t know if I could handle the rejection.”

_Even that’s a bit of an understatement. I would be devastated. That’s why I haven’t said anything yet._

“Well, it might be worth the risk,” Hux argued. “Worst case scenario if things go badly you could always just tell her you are just asking her as a friend.”

That… actually made a little bit of sense. Rey _had_ said he was her best friend. And from what he gathered from movies and his vague understanding of high school culture, friends _did_ often go to prom together…

_But if I was going to prom with Rey, I would want it to be a date. I’d want to hold her hand… and kiss her…_

“We’ll see,” he finally said. It’s not like his friends knew about how he felt about Rey anyway. He’d have to figure it out on his own.

“So listen,” Hux said, changing the subject. “I think we’re about three more sessions away from finishing this campaign. Should we invite Rey to join us for the next one?”

Ben looked up suddenly, afraid Hux had read his mind and somehow knew about Rey.

_Wait, that’s stupid. He doesn’t know. We’ve just talked about Rey playing D &D with us before. Chill, idiot._

“Well, we would do a lot better with more players. Three-person parties are kind of pathetic,” Mitaka said. 

“What do you think, Ben?” Finn asked pointedly.

“Yes… I mean… sure, if you guys want… that’s fine by me…” he said.

_Good job. Play it cool, Solo._

He saw Mitaka and Finn grin at each other.

“That settles it, then. I’ll let Rey know that we’re starting a new campaign soon,” said Hux, the ever dutiful DM. “I wonder what editions she’s played?”

“I can text her,” Ben volunteered quickly. 

Finn laughed at something while Ben composed a text to her. 

Then the guys packed the rest of their stuff up made their way up from the basement to start heading home.

“Seriously, Ben,” Hux said just as Ben was walking out the front door. “Try talking to the girl. You never know unless you try.”

His friends had never before been so encouraging about a girl. Usually they all just accepted that they were all too lame to ever attract anyone. It was odd, how they were acting.

“Maybe,” he replied simply.


	6. Star Wars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Promposals.

Ben was walking to his car after school one day when he was confronted by an angry Rose.

“Hey, Solo!” she shouted at him from across the lot.

He looked back and forth for a minute, as if she might be calling out to someone else. He pointed to himself questioningly.

“Yes, you!” she shouted again, carrying herself toward him rather quickly considering how short her legs were.

He simply stood still as she charged at him.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“What game do you think you’re playing?” she asked, her face pulled into a frown.

“What?”

“With Rey!”

_Oh shit, what did I do now?_

“What do you mean?”

Rose let out a growl of frustration and threw her hands up in the air.

“Why are you stringing her along, you giant doof?!”

“ _What_?”

“Oh don’t act so innocent,” she argued, “don’t pretend like you haven’t been leading her on just to tell her you’re interested in someone else.”

“Rose, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“But–…” Rose trailed off. She seemed to study him then for a moment.

“Oh my god.”

“What?”

“You’re… serious.”

“Uh,” Ben stammered, still confused, “yeah?”

“Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben,” she said, holding her head in her hand. “You poor clueless dope.”

“Ok, what the hell is going on?”

“Ben, are you aware that Rey likes you?”

_Surely he must have misheard her._

“What?”

“You. Rey. She has feelings for you.”

It took Ben another moment for his brain to process.

“WHAT!?”

“You’re so fucking clueless,” Rose said, throwing her hands up again.

“But… I don’t think she… I think you have it backwards. _I_ have feelings for _her_...”

“Well then why on earth did you tell her you’re interested in someone else?”

“I didn’t!”

“Think hard, Solo,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Think _very_ hard. Is there anything you could have said that might have led her to think that?”

Ben racked his brain. The only thing he could think of was when she got upset in the car with him last weekend. What had they been talking about? Oh that’s right, prom.

“I don’t know! She keeps talking about prom, and then getting upset.”

“Did you or did you not tell her you wanted to ask someone but they already had a date?”

“I…” he tried to remember what he had said. He vaguely remembered telling her that.

“Well it’s true… the only person I want to ask is her… but isn’t she going with Jak?”

Rose looked at him like he was the stupidest person alive.

“She’s not going with Jak, you idiot. She’s waiting for you to ask her!”

Ben had already been prepared to argue, but her statement caught him by surprise. He blinked a few times.

“She wants… me… to ask her?”

Rose let out a frustrated sigh.

“Yes, Ben,” she said in a tone Ben could tell was supposed to be gentle.

“So… she wants to go with me.”

“Yes.”

“So if I ask her… she’ll say yes?”

“YES.”

“Ok, ok,” he said, running a hand through his hair. This was a lot of new information.

“And you’re positive?” he asked again.

“We’ve been talking about you ever since she moved here, Ben. Trust me when I tell you that she really fucking likes you.”

Ben had never heard Rose curse more than she had in this conversation. He figured she must be serious.

“Shit,” he said. “How do I ask her? Do I tell her how I feel? Fuck…”

“Ok, calm down, stud,” Rose said, putting a hand on his arm. “I’m sure whatever dorky think you say will make her weak in the knees. But at least put a _little_ bit of effort into your promposal, you owe her that.”

“Promposal?”

“Alright, I give up,” she said, throwing her hands up again and walking away. “You’re on your own now.”

“Ok…”

“Oh,” she shouted while walking backwards, “and tell Hux to untwist his panties and ask me to prom already.”

He gaped at her as she turned around and returned to the other side of the parking lot. He couldn’t move for a minute. His brain was working overtime to sift through all of the new information he’d adsorbed in the past two minutes.

_Holy shit. Rey likes me._

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath to himself as he gathered the wherewithal to make his way to his car. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ben spent the rest of the afternoon and night searching “promposal” on the internet. As far as he could tell, it was seemingly a very stupid way of asking someone to prom. It usually involved some sort of surprise, or elaborate sign, or a play on words that involved the target’s interests. Some of them were done in a very public setting, others less so. Most of them made him cringe. It was literally the last thing in the world he wanted to do, exposing himself like that. But Rose had said that’s what Rey wanted, so that was exactly what he was going to do.

He started by writing down things Rey liked. It included a lot of games, but he decided pretty quickly to cross them off. She always wanted him to branch out, and she didn’t center her life around gaming like he did. And besides, games involved the rest of the guys, and he didn’t want to associate his promposal with them. Eventually, he settled on Star Wars. Rey _loved_ Star Wars. Ben was more of a Trekkie himself, but he was confident in his ability to pull off a Star Wars-themed promposal. The hardest part was going to be the actual crafting of the paraphernalia, along with not accidentally letting anything slip. He wasn’t really the smoothest, slyest person in the world.

By the end of the week, he had most of his promposal together. He’d ordered a Chewbacca costume (he was her favorite character) and several porg dolls off of the internet. He even had his mom help him make an embarrassing large sign that read “Prom or prom not. There is no try. Rey, will you go to prom with me?” in the familiar Star Wars block letter font. Now came the hard part, gathering the courage to actually do it. A day passed, then two. Then a week. Then two weeks. Ben just couldn’t bring himself to go through with it. What if she said no? What if she laughed at him? The stress kept him up at night. When Rey asked him why he looked so tired lately, he lied and said he was staying up late playing the new Red Dead Redemption II. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prom was only a few weeks away now. He had to act soon. Hux had already asked Rose. And Phasma had ended up asking Mitaka herself. Mitty had nearly shit himself but somehow ended up agreeing. It’s like they were in some weird parallel universe, or a dream, like Inception or some shit.

Eventually, he forced himself to grow a pair and make his plans to ask her, he was running out of time anyway. He planned it very carefully– he would cut out of Mr. Ackbar’s class early on Friday (he probably wouldn’t care). Then he would stuff her locker with the porg dolls so they would all fall out when she opened it (Han had taught him how to pick a padlock long ago). Then he would show up in the Chewbacca costume with his sign and ask her (he had already decided to commit to the bit and speak only in Wookie, though he wouldn’t wear the Chewbacca head so that she would know it was him). He desperately hoped she would like it. Tuesday came and went, as did Wednesday. He started becoming quite nervous on Thursday, trying not to give away what he planned to do on Friday.

It was on that Thursday that it all went down after school. He, Rey, and Finn were talking out of school together when Poe approached them.

“Hey,” he said to the group awkwardly. 

“Hi,” Rey greeted him warmly.

Ben and Finn looked at each other in confusion.

“So,” Poe continued, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “We still on for prom?”

Ben looked at Rey. Of course she wasn’t going with Poe. She was waiting for him to ask her, wasn’t she?

“Yeah, definitely,” she said with a small smile.

_What?!_

“You’re… going to prom together?” Finn asked, his voice a full octave higher than normal.

Ben waited for her to deny it.

“Uh, yeah,” was all she said.

Ben’s heart crashed downward into his stomach.

“Anyway,” Poe said, then, looking at Finn then back to Rey, “see you guys later.”

“See ya,” Rey said, giving him a wave.

“Rey…” Finn started, but Ben didn’t wait around to hear the rest. 

He stormed off as fast as he could. He could feel icicles stabbing into his heart. His jaw clenched uncontrollably. He heard voices perhaps calling his name behind him, but he ignored them and marched on. He didn’t allow himself to think. Not there, not then. It would have to wait until he had some privacy. He threw his backpack into the back seat of his car and sped off as fast as he could. He vaguely remembered telling Finn that he would give him a ride earlier that day, but all was forgotten as he turned on the radio as loud as it would go. He barreled down the road, ignoring the speed limit signs. When he pulled into his driveway and turned off his engine, he let out a scream. 

He ran into the garage, where he was keeping his promposal supplies. He ripped through the poster with his hands, tearing it to as many pieces as he could. He threw the costume and the dolls into the trash, cursing loudly. Thankfully, his parents weren’t home from work yet. He threw and empty can of paint against the wall as hard as he could, sending it flying. It ricocheted off the wall and hit his father’s prized classic muscle car– the Millenium Falcon.

“FUCK!”

Ben ran over to the other side of the garage. In some bizarre twist of fate, the paint can hadn’t left a single mark on the car. He sighed in relief. At least one thing had gone his way. 

He sat down on the ground and leaned against the passenger side door. He held his head in his hands, bracing his elbows on his bent legs. Now he knew what people meant by the term ‘heartbreak’. It felt like something was dying in his chest.

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ben had never played hooky before. He was a firm believer that skipping school was equivalent to a felony. Why would anyone not take advantage of the education system?

But he simply could not drag himself out of bed. Eventually, his mom came in to check on him when he wasn’t downstairs and making his lunch at his normal time.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Leia asked as she entered his room.

“Not feeling well,” Ben responded. He wasn’t actually sick. It just felt like it.

“Hm… weren’t you going to ask Rey to prom today?”

Ben winced. He was hoping she had forgotten.

“Yeah, but she’s going with someone else already.”

“Oh honey, I’m so sorry,” she said, sitting down on the edge of his bed and stroking his hair with her hand. It felt sort of ridiculous to be a 17-year old guy and have his mom stroke his hair, but Ben couldn’t deny it felt nice.

“It’s whatever,” he said, trying to play it off.

“Is there someone else you can ask?” 

“No,” he said roughly. There was no one else he even remotely wanted to ask.

He closed his eyes again, letting his mother’s touch do what little it could to comfort him.

“Well,” Leia said, sounding worried. “I can see that you wouldn’t be very productive in school today. Why don’t you stay home?”

Ben frowned.

Leia laughed.

“I know you don’t like skipping school. But I think you need the day off. That way you can go back on Monday feeling refreshed.”

Ben just grunted affirmatively. She made a reasonable point. He didn’t know what he would do if he had to see Rey today. Maybe taking the day off would help him get over it, over her.

_Unlikely_.

“Ok, well I have to head to work now,” Leia said, giving his head a loving pat. “Please eat breakfast eventually, sweetie. And I think your dad will be home for lunch so he could make you something.”

Ben just nodded.

With a sympathetic gaze, his mom left his room, thankfully shutting the door behind her.

He let out a sigh, turning his head to look out the window. It was bright and sunny. What a mockery of his miserable existence. Ben just laid there and fell half-asleep for what felt like seconds but turned out to be 2 hours. Eventually, his stomach growled loud enough that he forced his jelly-like body to roll out of bed and down the stairs. He barely had enough energy to place a few frozen waffles in the toaster. He didn’t even make the effort to get syrup, he just chomped on the waffles dry as he climbed the stairs back up to his room.

He had no idea what to do if he wasn’t at school. Within minutes of swallowing down the last of the waffles, he was bored. He checked his phone, and saw that Hux had texted him, asking where he was during their calculus class that they had together in the morning. He also saw Finn’s poll for the game of the day in the group chat. He ignored them both.

He sat down at his desk and stared at the wall for a while. No wonder Rey didn’t like him. He was possibly the most boring person in existence. He wondered why Rose was under the impression that she wanted him to ask her to prom. Rose was quite smart, possibly even smarter than him. It was out of character for her to be so wrong about something. And she and Rey were quite close. Maybe she misunderstood her. Maybe she thought Rey was talking about Ben when in fact she was talking about Poe.

_Poe_.

Seriously, what the fuck? _Poe,_ the dude who up until recently had been an asshole to him and his friends throughout high school. Why on earth did Rey like him? Especially given the fact that she very explicitly told him off at the beginning of the semester. 

The only thing Ben could think of was that Rey must be into the classic sort of charm Poe had. Even Ben could admit that he was a pretty good-looking guy. Certainly more handsome than himself. He suddenly felt very self-conscious of his big nose, his obnoxious height, his comically large ears. Compared to Poe, he was straight up ugly. Plus Poe had the whole jock thing going for him. He was popular. He had thought Rey didn’t care about that kind of stuff. But here they were, with Poe and Rey as prom dates and him sitting in his room alone wallowing.

_Great_.

After a while, he started up his desktop computer. Maybe a low-stakes game would make him feel better. He eventually settled on Lego Star Wars. It immediately reminded him of Rey, but he figured that maybe exposure therapy would do him some good. If he let the pain bite him real hard in the ass, maybe it would go away sooner. He chose Yoda as his character for the dope jumping capabilities, and soared through the stages. Occasionally, he would launch himself over and over again off from a cliff or into a plasma beam, just to remind himself of his own mortality.

His dad came home for lunch at some point in the early afternoon, but he quickly caught on to Ben’s sour mood and let him be, making him a sandwich and leaving it for him on his desk. He continued to play, letting his mind go blank as he massacred battle droids and stormtroopers. He occasionally found the wherewithal to use the bathroom, but otherwise remained planted at his desk. The game was doing a surprisingly good job at distracting him, although the sound of Chewie’s roars would constantly remind him of Rey’s weak impressions.

What he didn’t expect was insistent knocking on the front door of his house at some point in the afternoon. He ignored it at first, assuming it was some sort of package delivery or solicitor. But the knocking didn’t stop. Huffing, he paused his game and went downstairs. Flinging open the front door, he was shocked to see Rey standing there.

She looked lovely. All it took was a pair of jeans and an old sweater and she looked as pretty as ever. Even when she was breaking his heart, she was beautiful.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he replied. As the surprise wore off, anxiety took its place.

_Shit. This sucks. Did she really have to come rub it in my face?_

“You weren’t at school today.”

“Yeah.”

Rey looked at him as if she expected him to elaborate, but he didn’t.

“Why?”

_Why do you care?_

“Uh,” he said, “just wasn’t feeling well.”

“Oh.”

Silence.

“Are you feeling better?”

“No, not really.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

“Not really.”

She looked at him for a moment, biting her lip.

“Why have you been avoiding me?” 

“I haven’t,” he lied. He’d been so nervous about asking her to prom, so nervous about ruining the surprise, that he’d taken to avoiding eye contact and one-on-one conversations with her to avoid letting anything slip.

“You’re so hot and cold, Ben. It’s annoying.”

_Ouch_.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Rey said fiercely. “I want to know why you’re being a shitty friend.”

_Double ouch. Friend zone._

“You know what, I’m not feeling so good… I think I need to go back to bed…” 

“Don’t change the topic, Ben! Why are you being like this?”

“You wouldn't understand,” he replied, getting more frustrated by the second. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone and go hang out with Poe like she clearly wanted to? Anything would be better than standing there while Rey yelled at him.

Rey scoffed.

“I thought we were best friends!” she exclaimed, her face twisted with irritation.

Ben felt like he was swallowing a rock. It slid down his throat and to the bottom of his stomach.

“I thought so too,” he said quietly.

_Before you decided to go to prom with Poe instead of me._

_And I want to be more than friends._

But he couldn’t either of those things.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked angrily.

What right did she have to be angry with him? _She’s_ the one who ditched him.

“Apparently, everything!” he said too loudly.

Rey looked at him for a moment, looking baffled. Before Ben could react to her expression, she shook her head and continued on.

“Why do you always take out your problems on _me_ , Ben?” she accused, stepping toward him aggressively.

“You _are_ my problem, Rey!” he yelled exasperatedly, tugging at his hair with his hands.

_Why can’t she see how much she affects me?_

“What did I ever do to you?” she shrieked, pointing a finger into his chest furiously.

“You drive me crazy!”

“Well you drive ME crazy!” she yelled, poking his chest even harder. If he weren’t so frustrated, he would have treasured her touch.

“Why do you even bother, then?”

She took a step back at that, her mouth open. As was becoming a common occurrence for him, Ben felt instant regret over what he said.

“You’re right,” she said quietly, a harsh contrast to their bitter yelling. “I don’t know why I bother.”

“No, wait–”

“You clearly don’t care about me. Why should I give a _fuck_ about you?”

That stung.

“Don’t worry, Ben,” she continued. “I won’t bother you anymore. Have a great life. I hope it’s as sad and lonely as you clearly want it to be.”

“Rey–”

She didn’t wait for him to respond. To apologize. To tell her that she was what mattered most to him. That he didn’t mean to make her upset. That he was an insensitive prick.

Instead, she ran back down the front walkway to her bike that was waiting for her on the sidewalk. She didn’t look at him as she hopped on the seat and pedaled away, even as he chased her down the road, shouting her name.


	7. Magic: The Gathering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben learns things about prom that he never expected.

 

Taking the day off of school didn’t help. Neither did the weekend. Hux came over on Saturday, but Ben didn’t tell him what was wrong. Hux definitely knew something was up, but eventually let it go, and they played Halo on Ben’s Xbox for a few hours. After a while, he left. Sunday morning came and went, as did his mother’s attempts to cheer him up. Nothing helped.

Finn came over Sunday night. He had been there when Ben discovered that Rey was going to prom with Poe, so he was able to guess pretty easily what had him down. Finn sat at on the desk chair in his room while Ben laid down on the bed. They tossed a nerf ball back and forth.

“You were going to ask her, weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Ben admitted. “Had a stupid promposal planned and everything.”

Finn smiled sympathetically.

“I’m sorry, man. I know you really like her.”

“How did you know?” Ben asked, turning his head to look at him.

“Dude, everyone knows.”

Ben frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s so obvious that you like each other. I don’t know why neither of you have done anything about it.”

“Is it really that obvious?” Ben asked, groaning.

“Oh yeah. Since day one.”

“Rey liked me?”

“Still does.”

“Well,” Ben replied. “Not anymore apparently. Since she’s going with _Poe_.”

Finn sighed.

“Yeah. That’s fucked. I thought… maybe…” he trailed off.

“Thought what?”  
Finn paused, looking nervous. He put the ball down on Ben’s desk, and fidgeted in his seat. Ben waited patiently for him to respond.

“I guess I thought, maybe,” he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, “that Poe would ask... me?”

Ben sat up in his bed. 

“What?”

“Yeah…”

“Is he gay?!”

“No, apparently. I guess I just hoped he was. We’ve been getting along really well and… I thought maybe he… maybe he liked me? It sounds so fucking stupid when I say it out loud…” 

Finn looked extremely uncomfortable, and refused to look Ben in the eyes.

“Oh, man,” Ben said, still absorbing everything.

“Yeah, it was stupid. I just… like him. And he kept… I thought… well I thought I was picking up signals from him but I guess it was just wishful thinking,” he said sadly.

“I’m sorry, man,” Ben said, feeling bad for his friend. He suddenly realized how heteronormative his problems were, and felt guilty that he hadn’t been there for Finn.

“Maybe he’s bi?” he proposed.

“Could be,” Finn said, shrugging. “Still sucks that he asked Rey instead of me.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed.

“I guess we got screwed,” Finn said.

“Yeah,” Ben repeated. He laid back down on his bed and let out a sigh.

“I should have asked her earlier,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Rose told me to ask her, and that she would say yes.”

“I think any of us could of told you she would say yes.”

“Shit.”

“Do you want to skip prom together?” Finn asked.

“Yeah, fuck that. I don’t think I could watch,” Ben said.

“Hux will be pissed.”

“Well, he has a date. So I doubt he will be that concerned.”

“True.”

“He and Rose are disgusting,” Ben added.

“It’s revolting,” Finn agreed.

Both men paused.

“I’m jealous.”

“Yeah, me too.”

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday was even worse. Rey didn’t vote in Finn’s poll. She didn’t even show up at lunch. Ben thought maybe she had skipped school like he had, but then he saw her.

Sitting at _Poe’s_ table.

_Are you fucking kidding me?_

He should have expected it really. Of course she wouldn’t sit with him after their fight. She had made her opinion of him perfectly clear. But even now, Ben couldn’t bring himself to hate her. Not even close.

Thankfully, the guys didn’t say anything. Either Finn had told them what happened or they figured it out on their own. They just played MTG, and didn’t talk much. They spoke carefully to Ben, as if he was fragile, needed to be coddled. It drove him crazy. He resisted the urge to look over at her, refused to give her the satisfaction.

Sure, he had been a bit rude by avoiding her when he was trying to muster up the courage to ask her to prom, but she’s the one who attacked him outright on his front porch. She always told him that he needed to be better at communicating, but if she really liked him that much, why didn’t _she_ say anything either? Girls are so confusing.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ben kept his eyes down on his notes during physics class, trying to prevent any chance of accidentally looking at her. The day droned on for an impossibly long time. Upon exiting out the back of the school, he nearly ran into someone standing directly outside of the door. Someone with dark curly hair and tanned skin.

“Sorry, dude,” Poe said.

“Whatever,” Ben mumbled darkly.

“Is something wrong, Solo?”

_I literally can’t right now._

“Fuck off, Dameron,” he said, marching into the parking lot.

Poe followed him and grabbed him by the arm to turn him around.

“Look, I apologized to you guys. I know it doesn’t exactly make up for being a dick to you but at least I’m trying. What else can I do to make you not hate me?” he asked a bit tensely.

_Not date the only girl I’ve ever loved_.

“You can start by getting out of my face.”

“What the hell is this about?”

“Why don’t you ask Rey?” Ben answered before he could stop himself.

The frustrated expression melted off of Poe’s face. It was blank for a moment, before his eyebrows rose.

“Rey?” he asked in a tone conveying such genuine confusion that it made Ben pause.

Ben didn’t say anything. Just glared at him.

“Are you… into her?” Poe finally asked.

“Well… yeah,” Ben said, looking down at his feet.

“Dude, I’m sorry,” Poe said. “Is this about prom? She said no one had asked her… so I… she suggested…”

Ben looked back up at him at that.

“ _She_ suggested that you go to prom together?” 

_This sucks even more than Poe asking her._

“Well,” Poe continued, rubbing the back of his head with his hand, “kind of, yeah. She’s just helping me out really…”

“Helping you out with what?”

Poe let out a deep sigh. He looked around them a few times, even behind him. Upon seeing no one, he took another step toward Ben and lowered his voice.

“Look… I can’t believe I’m telling you this… but since you’re involved now… you have to promise not to tell anyone, dude…” he said, looking up at him questioningly.

“Yeah, sure,” Ben said. He hadn’t the slightest idea what Poe would tell him.

Poe looked at him another minute, seeming to contemplate whether he really wanted to tell him or not.

“Rey’s not exactly… my type…”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Ben asked, offended. Rey was amazing! What could fucking Poe find to say that was negative about her?

“No… no!” Poe quickly said, eyes going wide. “Not like that! She’s great! She’s just… you know… a girl?”

Ben blinked a few times. It took him way longer than it should have to process what Poe was saying.

“O– Oh. Shit.”

“Yeah,” Poe agreed, his lips forming a firm line.

“Wait, so you’re…”

“Yup.”

They looked at each other for a moment.

“So Rey…?”

“We were talking after school one day… well actually she came up to me to yell at me for shitting on you guys…”

Ben scoffed.

“And we got to talking. She’s… incredible.”

Ben couldn’t help but nod.

“She helped me figure out some stuff. For maybe the past year or so I’ve… well… I’ve felt… I’ve known that I’m gay.”

Ben didn’t really know where this was heading, but he didn’t want to interrupt him, so he just gave another slight nod.

“And she… she’s the first person I’ve really talked to about it.”

“No one else knows?”

“No, not yet. Well, I guess you now. Shit, you’re not going to tell anyone are you?”

“What? No, of course not. This is your thing, man.”

Poe looked relieved.

“Thanks. I know that I want to come out, hopefully soon. I just don’t know how to do it yet.”

“Well, whenever it feels right I guess. The only experience I have with that is with Finn, and everyone sort of always knew he was gay I think, so he didn’t really have to ‘come out’ persay.”

“Yeah,” Poe said, scratching the back of his neck. “He… well… I think he’s the reason I know that I’m gay.”

“What?”

“Yeah…” Poe trailed off.

“You mean, like… you like him? Or just that he’s gay and you can identify with that?”

“Both, I think,” Poe said. Ben had never seen Poe blush before, but he would have sworn his cheeks went a bit pink.

“Damn,” Ben said. If only Finn knew. “Then why were you such a dick to us?”

Poe looked at the ground, scuffing his shoe against the pavement.

“Rey thinks that I… I didn’t know how to act around Finn. So I just… did that I guess.”

Well, that _did_ make some sense.

“Do you think she’s right?”

Poe paused for a moment before looking back up at him.

“Yeah,” he said, sounding apologetic. “Yeah, I think so.”

“So…” Ben continued, “what changed your mind?”

“Rey,” Poe responded quickly. “She’s pretty upfront about all of that stuff. I told her that Finn and I have been hanging out a lot this semester. And that I like him.”

“So how did all of that end up with you two going to prom together?” Ben asked, dying to finally have his questions answered.

“I told her that I wanted to ask Finn to prom, but that I wasn’t ready. She offered to go with me so that I wouldn’t have to pretend to like a girl or something. We could just go as friends.”

 

_Of course it would be because she’s the nicest person ever.  
Right, focus on Poe._

“What if I told you something that might make you ready to ask him?”

“What do you mean?” Poe asked, cocking his head.

“Look,” Ben said, already feeling bad about exposing his friend’s secrets but knowing that sharing this information could only help, “Finn likes you, dude.”

“He… he does?” Poe asked, eyes bulging.

“Yeah, he told me himself.”

“Woah.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “He told me that you were who he wanted to ask to prom but couldn’t because he thought you were straight.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re not fucking with me?”

“Why would I do that?” Ben asked. He and Poe weren’t the best of friends, but Ben wasn’t the type of person to purposefully hurt people.

“So that if I ask Finn to prom then you can go with Rey?”

_He did have a point_.

“Although that would be nice,” Ben responded. “I’m telling you this because it seems like you guys like each other, and that maybe it could work out. Finn’s my best friend, I want what’s best for him. And besides, I don’t think Rey would go to prom with me even if you go with Finn. She kind of hates me at the moment.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Poe asked. “I thought you guys were good friends.”

“I’m... not really sure. I probably fucked it up.”

“You should talk to her about it.”

“I’d probably end up making it worse.”

Poe shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know. Worth a shot though, right?”

“Maybe,” Ben said. “What about you? Are you going to talk to Finn?”

“Yeah, I think I just might,” he said, with a hint of a smile. It was actually the most genuine smile he’d seen on Poe in a long time.

“Just be straight with him,” Ben advised. “Well, you know, not _that_ kind of straight… I meant–”

“I know what you meant,” Poe said lightly. “Thanks for being so cool about this, Ben.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he said, realizing just how much he didn’t hate Poe anymore. 

“But if you’re a dick to Finn we’re going to have a real problem,” he added, just to make sure.

“Yeah, yeah, absolutely,” Poe agreed, nodding vigorously. “Shit, yeah, ok. Should I text him? Or what?”

“Yeah, I think you just definitely talk to him. I guess just text him and ask to hang out. I think he’s free on Mondays.”

“Cool… cool…” he said, looking down at his phone.

Ben was about to end the conversation and say goodbye, but Poe looked back up at him.

“I’m sorry about all this, Ben.”

“About what?”

“You know… Rey. I didn’t know you two were involved.”

“No worries, man. I mean, we’re not really involved.”

“Yeah but you want to be. I didn’t mean to get in the middle of that.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ben conceded. “I actually planned to ask her to prom a long time ago, but I pussied out. So it’s actually just my fault, basically. I still don’t even know if she actually would want to go with me.”

“Shit, sorry.”

Ben just shrugged.

“If you talk to Finn, at least we’ll be 50% better than we are right now,” he said, trying to see the bright side. He _really_ wanted Finn to be happy.

Poe still had the trace of a smile, but mostly looked like he pitied him.

“Thanks again.”

“No problem, good luck with Finn.”

Ben strolled toward his car, contemplating the turn of events. He desperately hoped things worked out between Finn and Poe. He honestly didn’t see that one coming. Maybe he was too distracted by Rey, and Rey and Poe? It made sense that she was helping him out. She seemed to do that for everyone, including himself. Before this semester, he’d never been rock climbing, or to a school basketball game. He’d never hung out with Rose, or Phasma, or Snap. He hadn’t been to a hockey game in years. Hell, she’d even gotten him to plan a promposal. 

_Even if I ended up destroying it._

It hit him again that Rey, in fact, wasn’t into Poe. They were just friends. So maybe she _wasn’t_ interested in someone else? But that didn’t mean she was necessarily into him. Maybe she didn’t like anyone. But Rose had seemed so sure that she liked him. Maybe he blew it by not asking her to prom. And it was kind of late now, although if Poe ended up going with Finn she might look for another date. Unfortunately, he was sure to be at the very bottom of her list now.

It looked like all three of the guys were going to prom now. Now he would be the only one not going. He had planned on just hanging out with Finn, but now he would probably just game by himself. 

_Prom is stupid anyways._

He drove home, dragging his feet through the door and up the stairs to his room. He plugged his phone in so that it wouldn’t die in case Finn ended up calling him about Poe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be honest, I was a bit surprised by the reaction to the last chapter. We all know that Ben isn't the best at expressing his feelings. Rey knows this most of all. So for her to attack him when she confronted him at his house wasn't very cool of her. In that scene, I saw Rey as a bit mean. She definitely had every right to be frustrated, but I didn't see Ben as the only one to blame for the interaction.
> 
> But, it's all about how the reader sees it, so I guess that didn't come through. Oh well! C'est la vie.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your comments, I love being able to share and talk about reylo with you all!
> 
> Hope you enjoy the collage I made for this =]  
> I'm making another one for the last chapter too <3


	8. Phone Tag

Just as he had hoped, Ben’s phone rang later that night as he was doing his physics homework in his room.

“Hey, Finn.”

“Ben, holy shit.”

“What’s up?”

“I just hung out with Poe and guess what?”

“What?” Ben asked, feigning ignorance.

“He fucking likes me, dude!”

Ben couldn’t help but smile, sitting back in his desk chair.

“Woah, really? Nice!” he exclaimed, only half faking his excitement.

“Yeah, apparently he’s liked me for a while. I can’t believe it.”

“That’s awesome,” Ben responded, pleased Poe had apparently made good on his attempt to get together with him that everything had apparently gone well between them.

“Yeah, and you know what’s even crazier?”

“What?”

“It turns out Rey was just helping him out and offered to be his beard at prom.”

“Wow,” Ben said, feeling cut all over again. Even though he knew at this point that she was just going to go with Poe as a friend, it still hurt that she had asked Poe instead of him.

“Yeah, we called her together and we all talked for a while. Then, I shit you not, Poe asked me to prom!”

“That’s awesome, man,” Ben said, trying hard to maintain the enthusiasm. He was truly happy for his friend, but nothing could quite erase the ache of his situation.

“Yeah, I was surprised at first since he and Rey had already agreed to go together, but she said she was totally cool with it. She’s so great.”

“Yeah,” Ben answered sadly. She really was.

“I still can’t believe this,” Finn said, now sounding out of breath with excitement. “Shit, what am I going to wear?”

Ben laughed.

“I’m sure we can find you something. You still have like two weeks.”

“Wait, what about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You could ask Rey now.”

Ben sighed, getting up from his chair laying down on his bed.

“I don’t think she even wants to talk to me.”

Finn let out a frustrated groan of sorts.

“Ben, I don’t know how else to tell you this, but seriously, you need to man up. It’s so fucking obvious that you guys should be together. It’s honestly unfair.”

“I don’t know...”

“I’m serious, I’m not just saying that. Plus, I know she can’t stay mad at you for long.”

Ben wasn’t so sure about that. Finn hadn’t been there to witness just how angry she had gotten.

“I think it would be better if I just let it go… maybe we could even go back to being friends...” he started.

“Goddamnit Ben. For once in your life just fucking do something without overthinking it. She’s at home right now. Get in your car, drive over there, and talk to her.”

He was a bit taken aback by Finn’s tone. He hadn’t ever heard him speak to him like that before.

“Ok, ok, geez.”

“Right now.”

“Dude, chill. I’ll go.”

“Good. Text me later. And if you don’t do this, I’m gonna punch you. All dick and balls.”

Ben winced. Before he could respond, Finn hung up on him.

Before he could talk himself out of doing it, he slipped on his sneakers, ran downstairs, told his parents he’d be back before curfew, and drove himself along the well-practiced route to Rey’s house. He was cool for the first few minutes, but about halfway through he started to panic, and began cursing Finn, then himself. But he was almost there. He just had to suck it up and do it. He could talk to her. He could do that. He could apologize. Even if she didn’t want to go to prom with him, or even want to talk to him ever again, he should at least try to apologize or something. And tell her how he felt about her. It was getting exhausting not telling her.

Just as he parked in front of her house and approached the front door, it opened. Rey was stepping out of it, looking ready to go somewhere, bundled up in a big blue sweater in the chilly spring night air. Her skin glowed in the light of the low evening sun, and Ben’s chest tightened as it always did when he saw her.

“Ben,” she said, sounding shocked to see him walking toward her. “I… what are you doing here?”

To Ben’s bewilderment, she didn’t sound angry. Just surprised.

“I need to talk with you,” he said nervously. “Are you… were you going somewhere?”

“Yeah,” Rey said quickly, stepping toward him. “I was actually about to go to your house.”

“My house?”

“Yeah… I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh.”

“But you’re here now.”

“I am.”

He saw her suppress a laugh. He wasn’t sure whether that was a good or bad thing.

“I… wanted to apologize,” she said softly, taking another step toward him where he was frozen on the stone path in front of her house.

Ben gulped.

“Me too.”

“I know,” she said, crossing her arms over her stomach. “I know you didn’t mean to be a jerk, Ben. You never do.”

Ben nodded fiercely, unsure what to say. The fact that she knew this was already a step in the right direction, but it didn’t make him feel any better. It didn’t fix anything.

“I just… I hate it when people leave me, Ben,” she said, her voice thick. “I know you were just upset about something, but when you were avoiding me it felt like you didn’t want to be my friend anymore, and that really sucked.”

“I’m sorry, Rey,” he said earnestly. He never intended to make her feel that way. “I… I would never leave you like that. I promise.”

“Are we still friends?”

“Yes!” he said quickly, coming closer to her. “Yes, of course. If… if you want to that is. I mean, of course _I_ still want to be friends. I never meant to… I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you what was wrong. I just thought that… I thought that… I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just too nervous to talk to you.”

“Why would you be nervous to talk to me? You tell me everything.”

That was true except for one major thing.

“It’s…it was nothing. It was stupid. But I should have just let it go. I miss being your friend. And I’m sorry, for everything.”

Rey sighed and walked right up to him and gave him a hug.

“I miss being friends too,” she said, giving him a squeeze before letting go. “And I’m sorry I was such a bitch last Friday.”

“You weren’t.”

She let out a dry chuckle.

“I’m pretty sure I was, Ben. You were being moody and I just had to come over and poke you with a stick, didn’t I? You clearly didn’t want to talk, but I just kept poking you. I hate that I yelled at you like that. And I didn’t mean it. You’re not a shitty friend. Well, usually. But I still shouldn’t have said all that crap, it was mean.”

“It was fair,” he replied. “Me being moody isn’t an excuse for being rude to you.”

“That’s true,” she agreed softly. “But I knew something was wrong. I could have just given you space but instead I yelled at you. I believe that you’re sorry, but I hope you don’t do that again. Just like how I hope to not respond that way either.”

Ben bit the inside of his cheek. He pictured Finn ordering him around through the phone and worked up the courage to spit out what he wanted to say.

“Rey, I do need to tell you something.”

She suddenly looked worried.

_Shit, maybe I shouldn’t do this._

“What is it?”

_Fuck, just do it._

“I… um… the reason I’ve been weird and avoiding you... is because… because I like you. You know… like more than a friend.”

She didn’t react for a moment, then narrowed her eyes.

“You do?”

_Quick, this is your last chance to back out._

“Yeah,” he said, running a hand through his hair nervously. “I didn’t want to ruin our friendship, so I didn’t say anything. But… yeah. That’s why… I’ve been so… you know.”

_Yeah, Ben. Very eloquent. Nice._

She looked at him questioningly.

“Do you really like me, or are you just saying that?”

“What? Yeah… why would I…? What do you mean?”

“Because I’ve dropped so many hints that I like you and you never said anything!” she blurted out a little angrily.

Ben felt his jaw drop.

“You… you did?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air.

“Oh.”

“Did you really not notice?”

“No, I didn’t,” he said, dismayed.

“I thought maybe that you just didn’t like me…”

“Rey, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to girls. I’ve never had a girlfriend before,” he explained hurriedly, wringing his hands.

“Of course you haven’t,” she said, rolling her eyes and smiling.

“Hey!”

“Sorry, Ben. But it’s pretty obvious. Anytime I mention prom or dates you stiffen up like a scared bunny.”

“Well that’s only because I wanted to ask _you_ to prom.”

She paused at that.

“Why didn’t you? I practically begged you to ask me.”

Ben’s brain was firing at maximum horsepower trying to comprehend her statement.

“You did?”

“Yes! Do you not remember me asking you if you were going to ask someone like 8 million times?”

“No, no, I do. I just thought you wanted me to go to prom, but not like… with you.”

“I don’t know how I could have made it any more obvious, Ben.”

“Then why didn’t you just ask _me_?”

That suddenly shut her up, and she looked down at her feet for a few moments before raising her eyes back up to answer.

“I don’t know. I… I was scared. You’re my best friend and I didn’t want to scare you off. I thought maybe if I hinted at it enough you would realize.”

“I… didn’t.”

“I know,” she said, sighing, looking down again. “We both should have said something, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed. “I was actually going to ask you, you know. Before I knew you were going with Poe. Made a stupid promposal and everything.”

“You did!?” she asked, looking back up at him, her eyes glittering.

“Yeah, it was Star Wars-themed because I know you love it and I was going to dress up as Chewbacca and–”

He couldn’t finish telling her about his stupid promposal because she grabbed onto his t-shirt, surged up onto her toes, and planted a kiss right on his lips.

Time stopped.

Ben had never been kissed before.

She gently moved her lips against his. They were warm and soft and somehow felt like her. Ben didn’t know what was going on, but it was amazing. His moved softly in return of their own volition. Rey let out a sigh against his mouth, and pursed her lips against his again before pulling back just a bit. 

Her eyes were sparkling more than they ever had before, her fists still tightly holding his shirt.

“You are,” she said just an inch from his lips, “the sweetest person.”

“No I’m not. I made you feel bad.”

“Ok, apart from that,” she replied with a cute smirk. “Apart from that you are–” she pressed a light peck on his cheek, “the nicest–,” one on his nose, “funniest–,” one on his other cheek, “hottest–,” another on his lips, “guy I know.”

Ben was positive that he was blushing furiously. No one had ever said those kind of things to him before. And by the way she was acting, he was pretty sure that she was serious, and not just making fun of him. He rubbed his hands up and down her arms which were folded between them.

“Rey, you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”

“Stop it.”

“No,” he insisted. “I’m serious. You just like showed up out of nowhere and you were my dream girl and I was just too weak to say anything because you were my friend first and I didn’t want to lose that.”

She smiled again.

“When did you get so cheesy, Ben?” she asked, giggling into his shirt.

“Give me a break,” he laughed, “I’m trying this thing where I tell you stuff.”

“Mm,” she said lowly, making Ben’s stomach drop, “I like that.”

“Even when you yell at me, you’re the prettiest freaking girl and–”

“Ok, ok,” she said, cutting him off with another broad smile. “That’s enough truth-telling for now.”

Ben couldn’t help but just smile back. The panicky stomach ache he usually had when thinking about Rey was much lighter now, more akin to what he had heard people describe as butterflies. He moved his hands from her shoulders to around her back, hugging her close. It wasn’t their first hug by far, but somehow it felt brand new.

“You know what makes _you_ amazing?” she asked thoughtfully, reaching up to comb a few fingers through his hair, making him shiver, “you make me feel like I’m not a nobody.”

His heart dropped a bit. It wasn’t fair what had happened to her, how she felt sometimes.

“Never,” he said. “You’re not a nobody. Especially not to me.”

She smiled a tight-lipped smile, as if she didn’t believe him.

“Everyone here cares about you Rey. And they’re not just being nice because you’re new. You’re… generous. And you genuinely want to help people and get to know them. People care about you because _you_ care about _them._ ”

Her faux smile dropped a little, like she was really hearing what he was saying.

“I like to think that _I_ care about you the most, but that may be a little self-centered…”

She laughed, and Ben’s heart fluttered at the sound. He loved making her laugh.

“Ben, will you go to prom with me?”

“You… you want to go to prom with me?”

She nodded her head vigorously.

“I really, really want to go to prom with you,” she said, the hand in his hair reaching down to cup his cheek instead.

“Rey,” he responded seriously, eyes boring into hers, “you have no idea how much I want to go to prom with you.”

She scrunched her nose at him playfully before she pulled him close again and brushed her lips against his. When she withdrew, he hugged her close.

They both jumped when the front door opened from behind Rey.

“Alright you two,” Amilyn said, passing by them as she stepped out onto the porch. “Stop the fornicating. Parental supervision is present.”

They quickly peeled away from each other. Rey blushed and looked embarrassed, looking away from him. But Ben couldn’t stop staring at her.

“I’m headed to the grocery store,” Amilyn continued, apparently unbothered by Ben’s presence. “Do you need anything in particular, Rey?”

“Oh… um… no?” Rey responded shyly.

“Ok. If you two are going to make out, at least go inside. I’ll never hear the end of it if the neighbors see you,” Amilyn said lightly as she stepped off of the porch and toward her car.

Ben’s jaw dropped in shock. He had never realized Amilyn was so… brazen. Unfortunately, he knew that she would text his mom, and he would probably be subject to her teasing for the rest of his life.

Rey, meanwhile, had pulled the collar of her sweater up over her mouth, looking possibly the most embarrassed he had ever seen her. 

They waited until Amilyn pulled out of the driveway before either of them moved or spoke. Ben let out a sigh of relief as they watched her drive away.

“Well,” he said, reaching behind him to rub his neck.

“Oh my god,” Rey squeaked from inside her sweater.

“Oh come on, that wasn’t that bad,” he said optimistically, trying to convince himself as well.

“She’s my adoptive mom, Ben!” she said, eyes wide. “I’m supposed to be… well-behaved and stuff!”

Ben couldn’t help but laugh a little, even though it made Rey scowl at him.

“It’s not like you did anything wrong. Embarrassing? Maybe. But it’s not like you were doing drugs or something.”

“Oh my god, I wish it was drugs,” she moaned, rolling her eyes the way Ben loved. “Then at least she I wouldn’t have to talk about _boys_ with her later.”

Ben came up to her to wrap his arms around her again, which she quickly melted in to.

“If it makes you feel any better, she will _for sure_ be telling my mom, and I will officially be forced to talk about it for the rest of eternity. At least Amilyn will probably be cool about it.”

“I like your mom,” she said into his chest. “Come on, let’s go get hot chocolate or something. I’m cold.”

“It’s April, and you’re always cold,” he laughed. He was in a t-shirt and jeans, but she was wrapped in several layers including thick wool socks and at least three shirts.

He led her to his car and blasted the heat for her. He didn’t care if it made him sweat. If it made her happy, he would do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter, folks. It'll be a good one.  
> thanks for all the kudos and comments and support!<3


	9. Prom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-prom fluff.

[](https://imgur.com/rzx1zB3)

“Alright, let’s get everyone lined up next to their date again, a more casual pose this time!” Mr. Hux ordered. He was executing their pre-prom photos with surgical precision.

Mitaka looked nervous as he joined Phasma at the end of the line, but she just wrapped her arm around his shoulders and smiled down at him. Ben had never seen her in a dress before, but she looked pretty in her long cream gown with pink flowers on it. Mitaka was even wearing a pink tie to match. 

“Don’t worry,” Rey whispered to him, “I told her to go easy on him.”

“Ok, but if he has an asthma attack from the stress at prom, I’m taking him home.”

“Fair.”

He took her hand and led her back to the group. The Huxs had offered to host the pre-prom photo session in their backyard garden for their friend group and their parents. It was sort of embarrassing to have his dad snapping photos every 2 seconds and his mom yelling at him to stand up straight, but as he understood it, this was part of the prom tradition.

Hux and Rose were whispering to each other, and Ben had to admit that they made a cute couple. Rose’s fiery red dress definitely stood up to her loud personality, and Hux followed her around like a dog on a leash. The boy was whipped.

He and Rey took their spot at the end of the line, right next to Finn and Poe. The two guys had decided to avoid appearing too matchy and had gone with different colors– Finn in a navy tux and Poe in a dark grey suit. Ben was positive he had never seen Finn smile so hard in his entire life.

“One, two, three!” Mr. Hux shouted, shooting multiple frames with his high-end camera.

Although it was a bit awkward and embarrassing, Ben supposed he was glad that they would have some photos of them from high school when they all looked somewhat put together. Ben could count on one hand the number of times he’d worn a suit before.

“Alright, let’s have just the ladies now.”

Ben took his arm out from behind Rey, giving her a smile as he joined the other guys out of frame.

He couldn’t help but watch her as she posed with Rose and Phasma. She looked absolutely stunning. She had chosen a deep blue shimmery dress that cut off at her knees, which was definitely more her style than a regular long prom dress. The real kicker was the neckline that exposed more of her chest than Ben had ever seen before. He was sure his jaw had dropped when he first saw her. Even now he couldn’t help but stupidly stare at her. It was unavoidable of course, she was the most beautiful woman ever.

“Who would have thought, all of us going to prom?” Hux said, pulling Ben out of his reflection.

“Yeah,” Finn said, “it’s weird, isn’t it?”

“I still can’t believe it,” Mitty added, looking at Phasma. Even he looked a bit smitten by his date.

Ben’s contented smile suddenly vanished when he realized that there was a major aspect of prom that they had not yet anticipated.

“Shit.”

“What’s up?” Hux asked him.

“Do any of you guys actually know how to dance?”

Hux’s face lost any color it had, and Finn’s eyes widened.

“Shit, why didn’t we think of that!?” Mitaka exclaimed, instantly switching from his natural mildly nervous state to panicked.

“Guys, guys,” Poe said, holding his hands out in an effort to calm them. “Relax. You’ve just gotta move to the rhythm a little. You don’t have to be a professional.”

“I’m sorry, but you ever _seen_ any of us dance?” Finn asked, his voice high.

“Well… no–”

“Yeah, there’s a reason for that!”

“Finn’s right,” Hux asserted seriously. “This is far outside our realm of knowledge.”

“We’re doomed,” Mitaka added forlornly.

“Listen, nerds,” Poe stated firmly. “You can do this. No one will be watching you, everyone else will also be trying to dance. We’re all in this together.”

“Oh god,” Hux said, rolling his eyes. “Spare us, Troy Bolton.”

Poe frowned.

“I don’t know who that is, but I’m serious. Just… you know… loosen up. You don’t have to try anything fancy. You’ve got this.”

Ben really wanted to feel encouraged by him, but it was hard to believe him when he knew just how incredibly graceless he and his friends were. They all looked at eachother skeptically.

“So… we just...move?” Mitaka asked meekly.

“Yeah!” Poe responded enthusiastically. “Just step from one foot to the other if you don’t know what to do. Like this!”

He proceeded to demonstrate, but looked rather foolish in the absence of music. Ben figured he couldn’t look any _more_ dumb than _that_ , so he might be ok.

“Besides,” Poe said when he saw that he wasn’t convincing the guys, “the girls will know what’s up. Just do what they say.”

Now _that_ was something they could do. Letting Rey lead had become a specialty of his in the last few weeks.

“And don’t worry, babe,” Poe said to Finn, putting his arm around him, “you’ve got me!”

“Oh, great,” Finn said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

“So? You guys good?”

“Alright,” Hux finally ceded, “fuck it. I suppose can do this.”

“Fine,” Mitaka relented, still not looking pleased.

“I guess,” Ben said.

“Well, I guess that’s as good as I’m gonna get,” Poe said, giving the guys a double thumbs up.

“Finn, Poe, you’re up!” they heard Mr. Hux say from the other side of the garden.

The group split up as Finn and Poe went for their photos and the other guys rejoined their dates.

“What were you guys arguing about?” Rey asked when she came up to him and held his hands between them.

“Not arguing, we were just freaking out because none of us know how to dance.”

He wasn’t expecting the loud laughter that came out of his date’s mouth.

“Oh, for sure. You guys probably couldn’t dance if your lives depended on it.”

“Hey!”

“That’s ok, Ben,” she said, reaching up to wrap her hands around the back of his neck. “I’m not dating you for your dance skills.”

He couldn’t help but grin a little at the reminder that they were dating, and placed his hands on her hips.

“Anyway,” she said more quietly, leaning in conspiratorially, “Rose is trying to say that she and Hux are the best prom dates ever. I say we prove them wrong.”

“Are you kidding? Have they _seen_ us?”

“That’s what I said!”

“Ok, so what do we do?” he asked, gliding his hands from her hips to her back, hugging her closer as they spoke lowly.

“We have to be the best prom dates to have ever walked the face of the planet. I’m talking cute photobooth photos, dancing every single slow dance, eating every possible finger food available at this thing. We’ve gotta commit. You know I have no patience for sloppiness, Solo.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he teased her.

“I want Hux to vomit just from looking at how cute we are,” looking adorably fierce in her competitive mood.

“This is why you’re my favorite,” he said, leaning forward. “I’m in.”

“Good,” she said, pulling him down by his neck to kiss him. It was amazing how quickly kissing had gone from something he’d never done to something as natural as breathing.

“Ben, Rey, stop making out and get over here!” his dad suddenly shouted loudly.

Ben groaned, reluctantly plucking his lips from hers. He had thought they were out of line of sight. She giggled, then took his hand to drag him back to the photo area.

“Alright, we’re doing the whole group. Parents– stand with your kid,” Mr. Hux directed.

Leia and Han both wrapped an arm behind Ben. He could see out of the corner of his eye that his mom was beaming. She had been _thrilled_ when he told her that he was going to prom. He had to listen to her go on for an hour and a half about how she had almost given up hope because he was such a nerd but that she _just knew_ it would work out in her favor. Han had clapped him on the back and told him to use protection but also offered up the Millenium Falcon for him to drive Rey to the venue.

Out of his other eye, he could see Amilyn wrapping her arms around Rey’s shoulders and holding her close. Rey held her tightly in return. It made his heart burst with happiness that Rey had Amilyn to take care of her. Amilyn seemed to genuinely love her, and hit wasn’t hard to understand why. Recently, he had noticed that Rey was becoming more and more trusting of her, which must have been hard given her background. He was perpetually in awe of Rey’s ability to see the best in people, to form meaningful relationships. Rey talked about her more now, and no longer overanalyzed asking her for things. She had even complained about her a few times like any normal teenage daughter would, which Ben figured could only be a good thing.

“Ok,” Mr. Hux said from the tripod, setting on the self-timer. “It will go off in ten seconds!”

He ran to where Hux was standing with his mom with a surprisingly quick jog. It was in those few seconds before the self-timer went off that Ben realized that everyone was right there. Everyone that he cared about, everyone that cared about him. In that moment, it made him inexplicably happy. So happy, in fact, that the photo captured his first smile caught on film in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, y'all!  
> Hope you like my shitty photoshop lol.
> 
> Thanks so much for all of the kudos and comments and support. This was so much fun!!!!!!!!
> 
> Subscribe to my username to get updates on future stuff I post. I already have a  
> Reylo one-shot written and another multi-chap fic mostly complete as well.
> 
> Wishing you all the very best <3


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